


The Half-Life of a Dragon Not Quite Purple

by KissTheBoy7



Category: Legend of Spyro, Rent - Larson
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Childhood Trauma, Coming of Age, Coping, Crystals, Dragon Lore (some of which I pulled out of my ass), Gen, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Psychological Trauma, Self-Discovery, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 00:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 41,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9048277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KissTheBoy7/pseuds/KissTheBoy7
Summary: The timeline has been tampered with. Cynder struggles through the process of coping and coming into her own after years of serving as a tool to Malefor. Broken and believing her increasingly disturbing dreams to be hallucinations, she takes things into her own hands... or tries to, anyway. In 1980s NY, a young girl struggles with her own trauma.





	1. Part 1: Convexity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Velvetfur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velvetfur/gifts).



> Merry Ficmas everyone! This year I've dedicated a monster of a fic to my dearest, darlingest, oldest friend Ivy. She's been with me through all of my worst memories and even though she has a fuckton of her own personal bullshit to deal with, she always cares for me, and I know she's always there. I appreciate her presence in my life more than she could ever possibly know. In honor of her, I've painstakingly combed back through the entire The Legend of Spyro series as well athe wiki and come up with a plot that takes place throughout the second installment, Eternal Night, which follows Cynder's story rather than Spyro's. Cynder is just about her favorite fictional character and I have to agree that she deserved way more character development than she was given; in fact, she deserved her own storyline entirely. So I tried to give that to her. I hope that I did a good job. A lot of the lore in this story is concocted entirely by me, but some of it is related to the stuff I read in the wiki and my own observations and musings while playing and watching playthroughs of the games.
> 
> I love you, Ivy! Merry ficmas! The parts that I post today, Christmas of 2016, are only the first half of the story. More to come as soon as I get off my ass and finish it.

For as long as she could remember, Cynder had felt as though she was racing towards her death – she decayed, she felt, at a specific rate, both her sanity and her body which still grew even now to impossible proportions, tearing itself apart.

She was not naïve. There was something about her, something wrong. Unnatural. Broken.

And now, here in this endless swirling echo chamber, surrounded by some unnamed inescapable barrage of pure power, she felt… free.

_So close…_

It seemed to go on for ages, but at the same time, too quickly. She felt as if her soul – _a soul? since when had she had a soul?_ – were being ripped from her body and then forced screaming and thrashing back into it, only to be ripped from it again. She could see in the corners of her vision that her scales were glowing, coal-like. For only a moment, she thought she would die. Memories surged forth unbidden from the dangerous thorny parts of her mind, the last-guarded bits, not untouched by the darkness but still surviving. That part of her never spoke, but it _thought_ with all of its tiny might – and she ached that it was trapped there in a sea of poison and angry, muddled darkness.

 _This must be what it is_ , she thought dimly as the righteous anger of the Ancients tore through her in a violet haze. _To feel yourself turning to nothing but ash. Like a phoenix…_

She had never met a phoenix. Never even seen one from afar. There was so much that she hadn't gotten a chance to do, or see.

Spyro stared at her in exhausted, uncertain horror, hovering on those tired little wings above the ground as if still unsure whether she would lunge down and try to eat him. He was a persistent, overly-noble little thing with a hero complex. He was _exactly_ what she had come to expect from the Light.

An inexperienced whelp, the likes of which she had crushed carelessly underfoot so many thousands of times.

He was nothing but a _child_. She had killed children before, of course, at the order of her Master and that of Gaul and his wicked staff, but this almost seemed wrong. She had put it off as long as she could – but he had followed, and she had not had a choice.

 _Ignitus has surely been grooming him for this from the moment he stumbled across him,_ she thought bitterly. _The great orange blot._ She could only hope that this purple dragon would follow in the Master's footsteps, and that his first order of business would be to rid the world of that gutless coward.

Damn Ignitus. Damn the little purple dragon and those large, earnest eyes, and the clumsy eager way that he had wielded the elements against her.

Darkness threatened the corners of her vision. Cynder struggled to keep her eyes open, deeply aware of how far she had fallen – from the mighty black terror of the skies to this limp, pathetic, _weak,_ useless corpse –

Somewhere in the back of her mind she heard terrified screaming, amplified by the years of screams she'd heard and elicited from every creature imaginable. There was a whirl of color, overwhelming, and memories that threatened to break free of her skull and pour into the thickening air, to fill up Convexity entirely with the evidence of her misdeeds. The white-hot pain shattered her focus and penetrated her to her very core. Her black, corrupted core. It began at her center and spread rapidly to very tips of her wings, incinerating the membrane, cracking her scales, like the world's most vicious wildfire. And then the world surged up around her, enormous –

And the blackness engulfed her entirely.

* * *

_On two legs. Upright. The edges of her vision were obscured by a fluttery, fiery red, like wisps of something she had only ever vaguely known._

_She wobbled, unsteady, then lurched forward – little five-digit paws came out to clumsily grip some something smooth, hard, polished. Laughter erupted around her, from figures thrice her size, looming over her with no apparent malice._

_She could not focus her eyes. She narrowed them, attempting to examine the paws spread out in front of her – so pale and chubby, fleshy, with no scales to protect them._

_She shook her head in sudden confusion, and the wisps flared wildly around her face again, as if to comfort her. Or strangle her._

_What were scales? What –_

_She felt her mind slipping away from her, and desperately tried to hold onto it. Soft, blunt claws sank into the sides of her head. The laughter only got louder – one of the giant figures approached, lumbering, and leaned down to put it's fleshy moon-like face close to hers, a small protrusion rubbing at the tiny remnant of her snout._

_"_ _Come here, April, don't hurt yourself," the high voice chuckled. More wisps, darker and less delicate, came down around her like a curtain and she felt something clasp around her ribcage on both sides and lift her forcibly from the ground. She kicked, screaming wordlessly._

 _Suddenly, she realized that she didn't_ know _any words._

_And even if she did - her strange, wet mouth simply didn't have the capacity to form them._

_The fear surged up around her like a living thing. She was suffocating. The giants laughed and shook her. She clawed at her throat with chubby useless appendages._

**_No! No! Where am I?! Why didn't I die? What is –_ **

* * *

She roused, she didn't know how many moments later, to a wounded gasp. It could only be the little purple dragon – _Spyro._

"She _is_ just like me."

 _Why is he still here?_ Her pain-addled consciousness couldn't make sense of it. _Doesn't he know that he'll be the first to die?_

 ** _Hide, Spyro!_** The voice in the back of her mind shouted, but now it appeared at the front, louder, stronger than she'd ever heard it. Ragged from the bite of the thorns that it had finally escaped. **_Hide! Run! Get away from here – you've lost! You're out of time!_**

The ground shook and rumbled ominously. Behind her closed eyelids, Cynder felt the portal flash in warning. Widening.

 _So this is the end,_ she thought. There was nothing more to be done but give herself over to death. The Dark Master could scorn her all she liked – she would not have to live to see it.

The dragonfly's frantic voice rose above the cacophony.

"Dude, we've gotta get out of here. NOW."

"I- I can't leave her behind… I've got to save her!"

"What?! Save the beast that's been trying to kill us?"

Shame rippled through her, an emotion that she thought she had lost to Gaul and his savage whips long ago. **_He's right, Spyro._**

"That wasn't her fault! She was being used by the Dark Master!"

She wanted to laugh, hopelessly, but there was no last vestige of willpower left in her to lift her head or even open her mouth. From her left, she felt a sudden sharp tug, as if the air were sucking her backwards – into the portal, she realized. The Dark Realms were calling her. Reclaiming her.

Helpless, she shuddered and allowed herself to be pulled backwards. The stone scraped at her soft underbelly. She could not remember being soft before, anywhere, but now –

_Cccccynnnnnnderrrrr…_

The whispered sound of her name was like ice in her veins, encasing her heart. She couldn't breathe. Eyes squeezed tightly shut, she gave herself to gravity, and braced herself – to be torn apart, dissected, even eaten. Nothing was out of the question now. The Master was free, and he would take his revenge on anyone – anything he could get his claws around.

She felt the moment she passed through the portal like a blast of icy wind. It was agonizing, even in comparison to what had happened to her minutes ago. Her eyes were not open, but she could see her horrific surroundings perfectly – they were gruesome, dark yet glowing sickly with a purple light that seemed to seep out of the ground like poison.

A pair of enormous, gleeful eyes fixed on her from above. She gasped, sucked in a toxic breath to scream for mercy, and felt her soul fracture into uneven little shards as the darkness filled her lungs and tried to suck it straight from her body.

"Cynder!" His voice came from behind her like a distant echo of light, a dream of a remnant of hopefulness. **_No. Why is he here? Get out, Spyro!_** **_Run!_** Like a hawk, the little dragon swooped down to sink his claws into her shoulders, and with a mighty tug that she couldn't imagine mustering the energy for, they both tumbled backwards through the portal once more and into Convexity.

"Now we can go," Spyro shouted breathlessly, sounding so childishly triumphant that she ached. Where his claws pierced her, between her scales, she felt scoured – as if whatever Light he had emanated earlier still lived in him, and coursed through him to cleanse her.

Her limbs, her tail, even her wings felt like lead – she wanted to lift them, to break away from him and start flapping, to save him the extra weight – but she couldn't. Couldn't even move. Something was very wrong. Spyro was so much smaller than her, he shouldn't be able to drag her, let alone fly with her weight

_What has happened to me?_

"I'm right behind you buddy!" Sparx shouted back, although the words were nearly lost to the explosion of noise as Convexity began to come apart. Stone flew apart and towards the portal, pulled by the tremendous rage of the first purple dragon.

"He'll kill us all," she whispered, although Spyro couldn't have heard her. Terror was seeping through her as the ice melted. The air was rushing past them at alarming speeds, the temperature increasing to uncomfortable levels, and Cynder wondered – as she began to feel stretched and thin, as ringing sounded in her ear and vibrated through whatever was left of her body – if this were the end, after all.

They never slowed as they shot out of the narrowing entrance to Convexity and into the Dragon Realms once more. Cynder barely had time to wince before she was tumbling head over tail towards the earth. They collided with it in the same moment, hard, the sounds of their pained gasps mingling in the still air.

It was a comforting thought to fall unconscious to.

She felt something releasing its grip in the brittle broken wall of thorns at the back of her mind. The door to Convexity was closing, sealing up before her Master could force himself out. In his distraction, he had finally lapsed long enough to let her go.

 _Good riddance_ , she and the voice both thought vehemently. Cynder coughed a laugh as her eyes rolled into the back of her head.

They were the same.


	2. Part 2: The Temple

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I may have committed the sin of too much exposition and maybe a few too many commas. But hey, it's done. I spent a lot of time on this part of the story, and in a lot of ways its my favorite part. I love to feel Cynder's guilt as she tries to navigate life after her transformation. I can only hope that I've communicated it as nicely as it sounded in my head.

_The Half-Life of a Dragon Not Quite Purple_

**Part 2: The Temple**

* * *

The bitter, poison taste of Malefor's control lingered in her mouth even days later when she finally woke.

She was inside the Temple, but not as she'd ever seen it. She blinked her eyes open groggily, shocked at the light streaming in through the high windows and the wide-open doors. The last time she had been here, visiting her… her troops…

Her head began to ache.

"Ah, you're awake! Splendid! Wonderful! Magnificent!" The verbal assault made her cower back into herself, and Volteer's looming yellow face morphed into an apologetic frown. "Oh, I'm sorry, I'll be quiet."

"Yes, that would be nice," came another rumbling voice, which sounded thoroughly exasperated. Cynder wanted to turn to look at him, but couldn't; she _knew_ that voice. Terrador the Earth dragon had given her one of her most brutal battles, near the end, and she had injured him very badly before imprisoning him beneath Boyzitbig, just before it erupted. He was supposed to be incinerated – but here he was, clearly alive and well. And so was she. As the memory seared to the front of her mind, Cynder stayed perfectly still, paralyzed with fear. She had never thought she'd be faced with him again, especially like… this.

She took a quick, disorienting glance down at herself just to be sure. But it was true – her worst fears were confirmed when she saw her slender whip-tail shrunken down to a quarter of its previous size, her legs short and her wings so small that she wasn't even sure that they would keep her aloft. She could feel her eyes welling up with tears, something that she could scarcely remember happening to her… perhaps it had, in childhood.

Not that she cared to remember any of _that._

Terrador had waited patiently for her to process this, but as the minutes passed and Volteer's lips began to twitch once more, he let out a deep sigh. "Come along, Cynder. Spyro has been awake at least an hour – and he's anxious to see you."

_He_ WANTS _to see me?_ she thought incredulously. The idea was appalling.

_I tried to kill him – he already saved my miserable life. What more does he want to do with me?_

Still, she was in no position to argue, so she rose stiffly from her nest of moss and blankets – which had clearly been well-tended to by somebody – and obediently nodded, following Terrador at a stumbling snail's pace as she made use of her new tiny legs for the first time. She wondered silently how long it had been, since they'd knocked themselves unconscious on the way back into these Realms, but she didn't feel comfortable asking. Not him. Perhaps not at all.

Her throat didn't feel right, she noted as she swallowed reflexively. Not that the rest of her did. But it was distracting.

She could feel Volteer's anxious presence too-close behind her in the hall. It was enough to set her on edge.

_Do they really think that I'll try to escape?_

When they arrived in the main chamber, Spyro was already there, surrounded by the other two concerned and doting Guardians. He spotted her right away and broke into his toothiest grin, Ancients only knew _why_ , and she cautiously sidled up next to him. The larger dragons formed a half circle around them. It felt rather like a judgement – if it was, it was one which she deserved, she decided.

But no judgement came.

"Feeling better, Spyro?" Ignitus asked, low and tender. Unbidden and unreasonable, Cynder felt jealousy surge through her, rooting her to the spot with the cold fury of it. Perhaps if he had managed to muster that level of concern for _her_ –

_Get a hold of yourself. The past is the past. He couldn't have saved you._

"Not really, Ignitus…That battle drained every last bit of my strength. I can hardly even lift my head." Cynder did her best to contain the burst of alarm this elicited in her.

"Yes, it will take some time for your powers to return." The fire master seemed unperturbed, at least, which was a slight comfort. Spyro hung his head, as though ashamed – and seeming belatedly to realize that the implication might have been easily misinterpreted, Ignitus hastily continued. "But they will in time, young dragon. They will in time."

Cynder startled as Ignitus swung his massive head towards her earnestly, swallowing a gasp. He was _massive_ now, in comparison to her. She'd never felt so powerless before another dragon and it made her woozy.

If he noticed her sudden dizziness, he was kind enough not to comment on it. "Cynder, ever since I failed the night of the raid, I've dreamed of this day."

"It wasn't just you, Ignitus," Volteer interrupted, unusually somber. His bubbly demeanor from minutes ago had disappeared. He peered down at the two young dragons apologetically, his wings flaring to emphasize his words. "We _all_ failed."

Cyril and Terrador nodded solemnly in agreement, but Ignitus' eyes were still clouded.

"Be that as it may…" He seemed to take a deep breath, and smiled despite the melancholy mood that seemed to hang over them now. "We're together again now. Thanks to Spyro." He paused, glowing down on Spyro with all his fatherly pride, and Cynder watched as Spyro averted his eyes and flattened his wings to his side in embarrassment. "Well done, young dragon," Ignitus commended.

Spyro lifted his eyes again. "Thanks, Ignitus, but we still don't know what's happened to the Dark Master…"

That same question was increasingly prominent in Cynder's mind, as well; but again, she was too invested in fading into the background and hopefully going unnoticed for the rest of this meeting of minds. It seemed like she had a decent chance of it, with Spyro as the center of attention. Her jealousy had disappeared almost as soon as it had flared to life, shattered by the realization that she didn't _want_ the attention that he couldn't seem to shake.

_How does he stand it?_ She was already tired just thinking about it.

Terrador cleared his throat and stood taller. "No matter, Spyro," he rumbled. "There will be time to talk of the Dark Master later. Now, it's time to be grateful for your success."

She found herself nodding in agreement but made no sound. She hadn't spoken a word since she had woken up, in this tiny, frail body, and now that she thought about it, she wasn't sure that she could. She was afraid of what foreign sound might issue from her sore throat if she tried. Perhaps, she reasoned, the Master had stolen her voice when he had retreated from her mind. Maybe she wouldn't have to speak ever again.

That _could_ be a good thing…

Dimly, she was aware that Sparx had been speaking in the background. Flies, in her opinion, were obnoxious – this one in particular seemed to dramatize everything and complicate dangerous situations almost beyond salvaging, and she had only met him a handful of times. Mostly in passing.

It had still been enough for her to know that she didn't like him.

"You were a big help, Sparx. No doubt about it." Spyro was offering, the good humor restored to his voice. Cynder felt her heart thump painfully in her chest at the sound.

Right. They had to keep the gnat around – because he made Spyro happy.

Happiness was the LEAST that that dragon deserved, Cynder thought to herself wistfully. He was her savior. Now that she was fully awake, she was beginning to realize just how much danger he'd put himself in to save her… Even the most bitter parts of her, the bits that told her that she was now indebted, chained _again_ to a purple dragon, couldn't completely resent him.

He had saved her. There was no tiptoeing around it. He could have left her at the mercy of her Master – a shrunken, useless husk, a failure, and she would have deserved it – but instead he had braved the portal, braved the risk of being trapped in the Dark Realms with the dragon who would kill him savagely and eat his corpse, and rescued her.

Minutes after she had tried to rip his wings from his body, he had looked at her and recognized her as his kin.

Had said that it _wasn't her fault_.

She was desperate to believe him; but she couldn't quite conceptualize that he might be right.

"… no respect, no love, no credit…" Sparx was ranting. Cynder grimaced and ducked her head as Spyro turned to make exasperated eye contact.

_That's the second time he's done that._ Wonder was blooming somewhere beneath her scales, at the blackened, deadened center of her.

"My goodness," Ignitus said drily, turning to the other Guardians, "and I thought Volteer talked a lot."

As Sparx continued to ramble, Spyro stepped casually backwards and shifted closer to her. She could see his exhaustion, mirroring the bone-deep fatigue she felt in every joint and muscle, in the way that his wings drooped uselessly towards the ground.

"He'll shut up eventually," he whispered, eyes crinkling good-naturedly despite everything. She felt her snout crease in answering amusement, but no noise came from her throat. She still couldn't bring herself to try, for fear of failing.

If he was expecting a verbal response, he had the decency not to look disappointed when he didn't receive one. If anything, he seemed to understand.

Closing her eyes, she basked in the empathy, even though she had never done anything to deserve it. It was all that was anchoring her to the earth.

* * *

It was nearing dusk, and no further information had been gleaned in the days since their awakening in the Temple. Cynder, for her part, did not feel any less tired – the exhaustion only seemed to deepen the more she tried to stay awake. Both she and Spyro had been keeping odd hours, falling asleep at a moment's notice every few hours, for days.

He was troubled, she knew. It was horrible to watch. They were the same age, but he had led such a sheltered life – and now a war loomed on his rose-gold horizons, extinguishing them with cruel, impenetrable darkness.

The Dark Master would destroy this innocent dragon. And Cynder was powerless to stop it. She was _powerless_ like this, and she loathed it.

She glimpsed a gold-tipped tail disappearing around the corner as she sat up groggily from an attempted nap, and ignoring her nausea, she sat up and forced her weary feet to follow him out onto the balcony. There he stood, looking up at the star-speckled sky searchingly, so lost and alone… She sidled up beside him carefully, wrapping her tail around herself lightly to keep out the chill of nightfall.

"See anything, Spyro?" she whispered, still illogically paranoid that the Guardians would hear her and begin the interrogation that she expected from them.

"No…" He sighed, meeting her gaze briefly before turning his head back towards the darkening sky. His scales still seemed dull, even in the soft starlight and the flickering light of the gleaming golden torches fixed to the side of the Temple behind them. "But I've got a bad feeling."

Cynder suspected that it was the same sinking feeling that she had felt lingering in her gut since she had been coherent enough to really think about what would happen next. Without even thinking about it, she dipped her head in agreement and moved closer to him. He didn't move away; she breathed a sigh of relief that her presence was welcome. Right now, the last thing that she could stand was loneliness.

Or perhaps it was only Spyro that she craved closeness to.

She'd never been so close to another young dragon, she reasoned, and so she forced herself to ignore the quickening beat of her heart as she felt his heat sink into her bones.

"Me, too," she mumbled.

The garden and its softly glowing rows of colorful Crystals held no answers for either of them, nor did the sky. Not even the soft gurgle of the stream could soothe her fears. They stood close together, in silent, fearful solidarity, until the heaviness of their recovering bodies forced them back inside the Temple and to their respective alcoves.

She wished that she could help him. But she had been corrupted long ago, a war machine, a great mutated monster with terrifying powers, and now… now there was nothing left in her.

_She_ wouldn't be useful in the coming war.

But for now, he seemed as disoriented as she was – and she didn't want to lose this tentative connection that Spyro had forged between them.

He glanced back at her as they separated, staring into her face with startling intensity. For a moment it seemed like he wanted to say something – she could see the green of her eyes reflected in his, meshing with the liquid violet of them – but in the end he just smiled halfheartedly and waved a goodbye with his tail before trotting away. Cynder bit her tongue and didn't shout after him to ask, watching him turn the corner and disappear. It was tugging at her exhausted curiosity now like a tireless little firefly she knew; in fact, she was pretty sure that he was watching her suspiciously now from behind a pillar, but she didn't have the energy to confront him. She didn't even have the energy to follow after Spyro like she wanted to and settle in to nest with him for the night.

What would happen, she wondered, if she tried? Spyro was trying so hard to chip away the last of her defenses and break into her heart. She tried to banish the thought from her head as she patted down the moss with her paws and gingerly curled up to sleep for the night, but it wouldn't leave her alone. He had nothing – just as little as she did, maybe, if you didn't count Sparx – but he was willing to put his vulnerable heart on the line to try and draw her out of the withered husk of her innermost defenses. Naïve as ever. There was something charming about that kind of innocence.

She only wished that she had the courage to bridge that last little gap that separated them.

* * *

_The images flew past her too quickly to process, all too-loud, too-bright, and the screaming could have been hers or maybe her mother's – the shouting, the shouting was definitely her father, building himself into one of his towering red rages that left holes in the walls and doors hanging from their hinges, and her mother bruised and crying out on the floor, reaching for her;_

_"_ _Please, stop, David she's just a child –!"_

_She lost everything in these moments. Her name. Her self-control. She jerked her arms uselessly until she was gasping in pain, her shoulder dislocated. She was being herded towards the closet doors, which loomed menacing and larger than ever over her tiny body._

_Why was she so small? Where were her wings?_

_The door banged open; bent wire hangers bared like teeth and moldy boxes full of keepsakes from another life gaped at her, but the darkness overwhelmed it all. She could hear the whimper leaving her throat before she could stop it. The burly man – her father? This monster? – leant down and snarled in her face, his sour booze-breath turning her stomach:_

_"_ _Let's see how long it takes you to cry for daddy now."_

_Her mother let out a wounded noise, like a cornered animal, but it was muffled as the darkness snaked out its tendrils and pulled her in, the door slammed shut behind her._

_She trembled in the absence of light. She was surrounded by her nightmares. Shapes moved and snarled quietly, ominously, amplified by the quick heaving of her little terrified lungs and the dreadful soundtrack of her mother's begging as her father slammed and shouted and threatened death to all of them. Everyone. This whole building full of people, this whole block – and her._

_Most of all, her mother begged for her. Her young life. Her innocence._

_Although she was too young to understand such a wide concept, April (was that her name? had anyone ever bothered to name her?) felt a chasm opening at the bottom of her chest forebodingly; for if she'd ever had any innocence, which she was starting to doubt, it was surely gone now._

_For some reason, she felt like she had lost it long ago in darkness just like this._

_But that couldn't be right._

_She was only five years old._

* * *

These dreams confused her. She woke from them disoriented, as if she had forgotten she had wings, a tail, forgotten the entire shape of her and everything she'd been through… Minutes after waking she felt the last of it slip away, leaving her with only a lingering sense of foreboding.

The sunlight and Spyro's laughter often chased this away, but still, Cynder worried.

As the horrified shock and disbelief at the events that had transpired in Convexity had passed, Cynder found herself more and more convinced that something was still wrong – not just with the world around her, but within her.

Her mind itself felt broken. Whatever Malefor had done, whatever powers he had granted that disgusting ape Gaul in order to subdue her and create the monster she had worn the guise of for so long, it had warped her. He had known exactly how to corrupt her; he had carefully, brutally carved away her natural softness and shattered her mind, rebuilding it in a disturbed facsimile of the dragon she could have been. The dragon he would have been had he remained free. For him, she'd become a ruthless killer, more a weapon than a dragon with her own thoughts, her own heart.

In the quiet hours before dawn, when the Temple was dark and silent, she trembled with the fear that perhaps that murderous beast still existed somewhere inside of her. Was she a killer, after all of this? Spyro could have been wrong – it could still have been her fault, all of it, and she felt often that it was. That the atrocities she had committed, many of which she could still remember in all of their gory detail, were all down to her own twisted design.

Cynder was afraid to be alone, though she wouldn't admit it – or, perhaps more accurately, couldn't.

Who would she tell? _Spyro?_

No – he had _more_ than enough to worry about.

The corridors of her mind were a terrifying well of darkness and barely contained hatred, and she was not sure if it belonged to her, to the monster, or if it had been left behind in His insidious wake. Her insides were sharp and unpredictable, and often left her bloody if she so much as _tried_ to examine her memories of the past years. In particular, the months shortly after her hatching was obscured, and after the first shot of lightning-hot pain that had lanced through her skull she had ceased her efforts to recover it entirely.

_There will be time for that later,_ she told herself, but even she was unconvinced by the wavering tone of her mental voice.

That other evil voice was gone from her head, as was the heavy presence of the Master; but as tired as she was, she couldn't bring herself to drop her guard. Several days were spent with her eyes forced wide open, her tail whipping fearfully at every soft footfall echoing through the halls, at every voice she did not immediately recognize, even at the glimpse of her own reflection in one of the pools in the garden.

Lunging backwards, she had found herself face-to-face with her own dark and rippling reflection in the clear water; her eyes were stretched wide in fear, but they were still recognizable. They were the only thing that hadn't been altered when Spyro had forced the evil out of her. Her body was smaller, younger and less deadly, but it seemed that her eyes would always remain the same. She took a strange, guilty sort of comfort in it.

Someday surely someone would recognize her as a mercenary, but for now, the opinions of the other dragons were all that mattered.

She stared at the markings that had appeared inexplicably bright on her forehead, one large rounded triangle and two smaller, thinner ones pointing downwards beneath it. To her they looked like twin crescent moons beneath the fullness of their mother.

She wondered if she had ever had a mother. Spyro spoke of his mother the dragonfly with a quiet reverence. Unconditional love and care were foreign to her, so much that she felt uncomfortable with the idea, but nevertheless a strange yearning took up residence in her chest cavity and refused to leave. Every time the wind blew across her back she was distracted by it, thinking… wondering.

She could not shake the lingering sense of unease as the days blurred together, and reality blurred similarly into the nights. There was the odd sense that nothing mattered – they were in limbo. The threat had receded, taken with it their most powerful defenses, and they were helpless to do anything but wait for them to be returned. The growing helplessness was horribly reminiscent of her time under the Dark Master's control, and Cynder couldn't tolerate it. She was growing restless. Her scales itched, and her wings yearned restlessly to take her away, to find some way of striking first. Of taking something back which should have been hers.

Of redeeming herself, maybe. If that was possible.

She knew that Spyro felt it too. _His_ eyes had changed, though she didn't think he'd realized it yet, so caught up in his endless troubling thoughts that he hadn't taken a good look at himself. They glowed in the moonlight, more deeply violet than his scales, and iridescent. He was beautiful in a way – but so small. So young.

Cynder knew that she was young as well, but she didn't feel so at all. Not at all.

* * *

Another week passed before Ignitus approached her alone.

(She had not counted the hours, exactly, but it would be a lie to say that some pitifully small and insecure part of her hadn't been holding its' breath.)

Cynder found herself shrinking back against the wall as a monstrous shadow fell across her path. She was on her way back inside from a session of quiet absorption in the gardens, where she'd lain in the sun and rubbed her face against the nearest Crystal (fuschia, reminiscent of Spyro's eyes in the morning light) for several hours, and she had been perfectly relaxed until now. It was nothing but instinct; she was already chastising herself for it, embarrassed, not wanting Ignitus to sense the fear that choked her half to death… But he was nothing if not tactful, at least when it came to her, and when he finally turned the corner fully and leant down to speak to her, he made no mention of it.

"Cynder… I had wondered if you would come to speak with one of us. About your abilities." He seemed less than comfortable, which only served to make her more anxious.

She blinked slowly up at him, calculating all of the reasons that he might word it this way – what he might be avoiding.

"What… what do you mean?" she asked, her voice so pitifully small that she winced and cleared her throat. "Abilities?"

If she closed her eyes she was sure she could have conjured dozens of gruesome images, the sticky, oily feeling of using Malefor's gifts to hurl the earth and breathe wicked flame. She hadn't felt it lurking in the beds of her claws or in her throat in quite a while now, nor would she want to use those powers again if she could. A sick pit opened in her stomach; was this why she'd been allowed to recuperate here all this time, despite her crimes? The Guardians _must_ want something from her. She'd been anxiously wondering since she'd woken up what it was. If Ignitus was going to ask her to try, to summon up the dregs of Malefor's power from her ravaged insides, she was afraid that she would have to tell him no.

Would they still let her stay at the Temple, if she didn't give them what they wanted?

"You are a dragon, Cynder." Ignitus said firmly. She blinked hard and nodded reluctantly for him to continue, which he did promptly. "And you have great potential… Spyro came into his abilities naturally, and recently." He looked intently into her eyes, projecting kindness fiercely enough to make her joints quake. "I am sure that, had circumstances been different, you might have as well. Malefor's influence corrupted your natural growth, and twisted it. Now that you are free of that influence…"

She swallowed, and forced herself to interrupt before he could continue. It was too painful to let him, or herself, hope. "I don't think that I have any."

She hadn't spoken to him directly since his capture, and if memory served (and unfortunately, it did) she had been… unforgivably cruel. Vicious. Even possessed by the Dark Master's sinister power, she had been bitter about Ignitus' neglect. He had been the last to see her egg, untouched and innocent, before it had been snatched away and enveloped in the darkness. If he had only stolen her egg as well, and sent her floating down a river, maybe…

But that didn't mean that he deserved the pain she'd inflicted on him. She focused on that guiltily.

He didn't seem to make the same connection, or if he did, then he passed no judgement. "Nonsense. Every dragon is born with an affinity. You are no exception."

She felt his eyes roam her lithe form very briefly, as if assessing her, and held her breath. _No, no, no_ – she didn't want this hope, but it welled up in her anyway, like a natural hot spring. Uncontrollable.

Finally, he gestured to her forehead where the new markings gleamed like trapped moonlight, and murmured, "You are a midnight dragon. Do you know what that means?"

"No." The floor seemed to quake beneath her; it took her a long moment to realize that it was her that was quaking. She sank her claws into the grooves of the stone to anchor herself, feeling foolish in her excitement. "No one ever taught me about anything."

Except for killing, of course. Killing and magic that didn't belong to her.

This seemed to pass silently between them, and Ignitus' brows creased in sad sympathy. It forced her to look away from him. "That was – _is_ – a crime. We dragons have a rich heritage, Cynder. You… and Spyro, as well…you both have been robbed of so much knowledge. So much history…"

He seemed to withdraw into himself, then, and for the first time Cynder realized that his flame-orange scales were bronzing at the edges. Ignitus was very old. He spoke of the Ancients often, but Cynder wondered if he might not be only a generation younger than those dragons of old… The other Guardians were certainly past their prime, with the exception of Volteer, but Ignitus moved – and spoke – like a dragon who had lived centuries, and seen far too many tragedies. His eyes were large and wise, his movements slow and unbearably regal sometimes. Sparx would say he was nothing but a great lumbering fire hazard, which in Cynder's opinion was just another reason that the dragonfly was nothing but a tiny, mouthy nuisance. Because Ignitus was imperfect, but he was clearly worthy of more respect than the rest of them put together… he had earned that much, with his tireless efforts to protect them. All of them.

She was startled to find his eyes fixed back on her, looming and curious. "Your mother…" He took a breath, as if deliberating how much information to dole out. Those words alone had her heart beating wildly, breath caught in her throat. "She, too, was a midnight dragon. I knew when I first saw your egg laid in its nest… it was pitch black, and beautiful. The same color as her scales… and as yours are, now."

He bowed his head in reverence. Cynder felt a silent whine begin in the back of her throat.

_Her mother_.

Hadn't she wondered only days ago if she'd had a mother, once? What had become of her?

She could be anywhere, but Ignitus had spoken of her as if she was buried in the past. Cynder knew what had happened to the _other_ dragons who had frequented and inhabited the Temple. Ice filled her veins and stilled her heart with painful suddenness.

_Did I kill her?_

Ignitus seemed to read her horrified thoughts, and he shook his head. "No, Cynder, your mother was very old… she was a nest mother in her last season, and you were among her last heirs." He closed his eyes wistfully, remembering; Cynder longed to see what was behind those closed lids so badly that her chest cavity ached.

"She laid only three eggs, that season. Your siblings were crushed… in the raid. Before they could ever have hatched." His voice trailed into a regretful whisper as it always did when the raid was brought back to the front of his mind. He lifted his head to gaze about the Temple, as if to reassure himself that that time was past. "You would have been the only midnight dragon among them, Cynder. You are very special."

"No – no." She couldn't internalize that. It just didn't fit. Her eyes fell shamefully to the stone floor, wings flattening to her flanks. "I'm not special, Ignitus… no matter how special my mother was. If I was special, I wouldn't have been so easy to…"

"Malefor is a very powerful foe," Ignitus said gravely. He paced heavily to the right, towards the small window which was set too high for Cynder to reach. The light dappled the small scales on his face like something angelic, while Cynder remained on the ground in the dim torchlight and flickering shadow which lapped comfortingly at her ankles and draped over her shoulders, blending right in with her scales, like coming home. "You could not have stopped him. Even if you had been fully grown."

She felt the old anger surge up in her, then, the helpless kind which had motivated some of her nastiest kills. "Then what is the point? What's the point of all of this, Ignitus, if none of us are strong enough to defeat him? Or will you admit that I'm just weak?"

He levelled a quelling look at her. "You are not weak, Cynder, but the strengths of the midnight dragon lie elsewhere… Spyro is our only hope. He is a purple dragon. His strength lies in the elements, and the power of the Ancients which flows through him."

"His abilities are gone," Cynder muttered, not realizing her own petulance. She was troubled. Ignitus watched her with all of the patience of a parent – a foreign feeling to her, as she had never had an adult in her life with any good intentions. His tail curled protectively in a wide circle around the both of them.

"They will return in time," he said soothingly. "As will yours. If you had not been corrupted..."

She couldn't stand to hear those words again.

"I have no abilities to return, Ignitus. My powers… they were his. He infected me with them…" It was more and more difficult to speak, her throat so clogged with emotion, with memory. She did not want to relive it all; but the surface tension could only withstand so much, and she was beginning to fear that she would break it, and it would all come spilling out like black ink to stain everything around her. She was nothing but a container full of wickedness. The last words came out a fearful whisper.

"I don't even know who I am."

"Have patience." Ignitus said firmly but not unkindly. "As I said, the midnight dragon is a creature of great potential… There have been only so many throughout history, you know."

She didn't want to fall into the trap of curiosity, but she was horribly deprived, she realized. Ignitus had been right when he said that she had been robbed of her heritage. Under Gaul's hateful tutelage, Cynder had hardly even understood that she was a dragon until she had grown prematurely huge and mutated, complete with her dark transplanted powers.

There had never been a time that she had been able to appreciate, or even comprehend, the true nature of what she was. She had never reveled in magic beyond its capacity to maim her opponents… she had never stopped to play, as she had seen Spyro do, to frolic and joyously learn to manipulate the elements the way they were meant to.

She had never felt special. She had never considered any of this to be special… or anything more than a tool. The realization felt crushing. Her childhood… gone. Her innocence… had never even existed. She had been fashioned into a killer the moment she had hatched from the safety of her egg, and the world she had broken into had turned out to be one of unending darkness, poison, sickening fear, and unforgiving, howling wind.

She thought of Concurrent Skies, and how alone she had felt lurking among the crystals by herself, her distorted reflection surrounding her and providing a poor companion. She thought of the many questions she had learned not to ask, and the wanting she had repressed.

And so, she couldn't help herself from asking just one of the questions that had begun pressing at the edges of her skull. Her voice trembled. "What was my mother's name?"

Ignitus smiled sadly. "Andromeda." The syllables seemed to ring in her ears, unfamiliar but hauntingly beautiful.

Cynder let loose a quiet sob.

"Did she name me?" she managed, even though the world seemed to quake around her, threatening to fall to pieces once again. It was always doing that, and it was getting tiresome, always being assaulted by this panic, this crisis that only seemed to affect her.

"I am afraid that she did not have the time. In our culture, Cynder, a nest mother does not name each of her children… The elders are often given that prestigious task. A young dragon does not have one, or two parents, but a whole community of mentors, and a whole nest full of peers that they may consider their kin in one way or another. But," he said thoughtfully. "I believe that she would have wanted to name you."

His eyes roamed the slender, pointed shape of her wings, her tail. "Yes," he confirmed again, more to himself than to her. "You are the last of her bloodline. She would have given you a name, had she been alive to."

Head spinning, Cynder felt herself lowering her belly to the floor before she had a chance to decide if she even wanted to. This was… too much.

But she needed it so badly, this and so much more. The questions were practically pouring from her ears now, down her throat, flooding her lungs and her veins and her throbbing heart.

She couldn't find her voice to speak, so for once she was glad when Ignitus spoke for her.

"I know that you must have questions, young dragon. I will always be more than happy to answer them. I have… much to make up for."

His neck stretched downward so that he could touch his chin to her head, very gently; he murmured a good night and then he was rising again to turn the corner and disappear, leaving her prone in the torchlight, her hot tears decorating the stone beneath her head.

She did not know how long she laid there imagining the past, as it could have been and as it might have been. She conjured up an image of her mother in her mind – Andromeda, unbearably beautiful, enormous and lithe the way that Cynder should have been allowed to grow, hovering protectively over her little nest of dark, glittering eggs. She imagined the apes as she remembered them, hairy and snarling, beating her siblings' eggs into pulp against the rocks, cracking them open and letting them slide lifelessly out of the glittering pieces…

And then she remembered how she had been – the huge, tattered wings she had battered the air with, the terror she had inspired in every creature she encountered, sometimes only seconds before she ripped out their throats.

The darkness wrapped around her like a suffocating blanket as even the out-of-reach daylight began to fade, leaving only the torches to illuminate the hall.

She didn't want to know what her mother would think of her now.

* * *

Spyro found her by the fountain, feeling sorry for herself. She was so absorbed in her task of despondently tracing the lines of the golden dragon maw with her eyes that she scarcely noticed his approach, until he headbutted her shoulder and snorted loudly in her ear.

She whirled about and fixed him with her most reproachful expression. "I'm busy."

"Yeah, you looked busy." His soft, smiling sarcasm was sometimes too much for her; Spyro was one-of-a-kind, as far as she was concerned. Cynder swallowed down the strange, unwelcome fluttering of her heart and attempted to glare at him. It obviously fell flat, because he laughed, "Redesigning the fountain? Or the entire Temple?"

He settled down beside her and let his tail curve maybe just slightly too close to her. Friendly. She blinked at it until it started to blur, and then turned her eyes skyward as the burning rose again behind her eyes. Spyro was like a magnet for her tears, she thought morosely.

She didn't mean to confess anything to him. It just... slipped out. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do now."

He peered upwards as if chasing her gaze, humming thoughtfully. "Well… I guess it depends on what you mean."

"I don't know who I am. I don't feel real." Like peeling bark, the words fell from her, lightening her load. Revealing her pale, empty insides for him to see. "I don't have any abilities like you, Spyro. Ignitus says that I would have… that I should. But I don't."

Now that her horrible insecurity was out in the open, she already felt foolish. Spyro was quiet for a moment as he absorbed it. She was thankful for that. She didn't know how soon she could bear it – because it would be either condemnation or lies.

Maybe she was no better than the others. Maybe she was placing too much unreasonable hope in a dragon no older than herself, and nearly as frightened as she was. She closed her eyes and berated herself for it.

_Spyro has_ enough _terrible expectations… He has his own burdens… You're going to become one of them if you keep using him like this…_

He spoke very slowly, as if even he was unsure of if his ideas were possible. "Maybe Ignitus is right… You have to give yourself time, Cynder. Every dragon has an element, right? You can't be the exception, just because you were kidnapped."

"That's a nice way of putting it," she grumbled, but it was hard not to smile. He had such a naïve way of seeing things.

She often wondered if he knew, if he could even guess, the sorts of things she had been through. She suspected that he didn't have the scope to imagine it quite yet – which wasn't his fault, really. He was young. She'd never been allowed the luxury. He'd never experienced anything like she had, thank the Ancients.

_Maybe I should tell him,_ she thought guiltily. _Maybe I've been hiding things… because if he knew, then he wouldn't want to sit with me like this, and talk beneath the stars. Not with someone like me._

Spyro wouldn't befriend a killer.

Still, by some twist of fate he had, and perhaps he deserved to know. Just in case he wanted to get away from her – save himself the trouble, and the pain.

"Spyro," she began quietly after a long, peaceful moment. He was gazing dreamily at the sky, but he turned to her when she called his name, those large eyes full of more understanding than she deserved. She forced herself not to look away. "I don't think you understand… the things I've done. The things that _he_ did to _me_."

"Hey – wait," Spyro protested, front legs rising suddenly, as if the look on her face had inspired him to spring up to defend her from herself. "Don't you go thinking that any of that was your fault. Cynder, you hadn't even hatched yet when you were taken!"

She blinked, taken aback by his vehemence. Unmoved, she shrugged and continued, "It doesn't matter, though, because I still did all of those horrible things… Maybe I was ordered to do them, but I did them."

"You aren't bad," he insisted, shuffling closer to her and pressing their flanks together. "You're amazing. I would never have been able to stand that… I don't think I would have lived through it, but you did. And now you're here!" He gestured emphatically with one paw around the ivy-covered garden, towards the Temple which rose serenely over them like a shield from the real world. "You're still you. That _counts_ for something."

_Am I still me?_ She shook the distracting thought from her head and heaved an exasperated sigh. "Spyro, I don't think you get it. I killed a lot of people… I killed _dragons_." She swallowed bile, and thought that she saw him do the same. He sat down again without being told, though their wings still brushed. She couldn't decide if he'd done that on purpose.

"I tortured people… for information… for fun." She drew a shuddering breath, suddenly lightheaded all over again. This day just keeps getting better, doesn't it? "I wore chains but they stopped using them to drag me around by the time I stopped growing… I liked feeling powerful, Spyro. I would have killed you."

She could still feel the phantom sadistic delight she'd taken in pounding him into the ground. _Little one_ , she used to call him. _Bite sized_.

Perhaps she had felt badly for it back then, too, but that wouldn't have stopped her from murdering him in cold blood. Had Malefor commanded it, she would have sunk her fangs all the way through him and watched him bleed to death on the ground before her.

He didn't miss a beat, tail wrapping tightly around her side. The tip nudged at her chest. "You weren't in your right mind," he said confidently. Her eyes were still intolerably dry from her earlier crying spell, but she could feel her tear ducts swelling all over again, hot and itchy. She didn't want to cry anymore, but she couldn't _help_ it – there was just so much wrong, with her and with the world. Why did Spyro bother with her?

"I've already forgiven you, Cynder." He peered at her compassionately, tipping his head closer to her in invitation. "You need to forgive yourself."

She tucked her head underneath his chin, part out of desperation to keep him from seeing her tears begin to fall, but mostly because she needed his comfort.

"I don't think I can."

Evidently he knew that it would be useless to argue with her any further, because he didn't say another word for a long, slow moment, just staring into her eyes intently as if he was trying to figure something out. Cynder forced herself not to look away even though she desperately wanted to, feeling the tears flood closer to the surface every moment. He unfolded one wing carefully and rested it over her back, like a thin, comforting orange blanket.

She let out a ragged breath.

"You can cry," he whispered, and she couldn't help herself.

* * *

It made sense to her, that she would have another nightmare that night, after she had found a quiet alcove to tuck herself into – far away from everyone else. There were too many thoughts spinning wildly, nauseatingly through her mind, and at first sleep was difficult. Soon, though, she embraced it… if only because she could no longer bear to be awake.

It was short, but just as horribly confusing as the others.

* * *

_There was a one-story brick building, the blinding sun between the clouds, and a horde of clamoring children looking up at her, some jeering and some wide-eyed with fear._

_She had worked hard to climb this far up and outwards. Her limbs had never seemed so stubby and weak, and she gasped for breath, the metal bars digging painfully into her knees and the heels of her hands. The ring her mother had given her was too large by far, so because it was beautiful and because she felt terror every time she felt it slip up and down her finger, she'd tucked it into her pocket for safekeeping while she climbed this contraption. They were called "monkey bars" which, in her half-conscious daze, she found incredibly strange. The other children had simultaneously egged her on and threatened to tattle on her to the supervising teacher currently dozing in a lawn chair in the shade of the school building._

_She couldn't remember why she had climbed up here, but now that she was so high up from the ground she was beginning to feel dizzy. The wind pulled at her hair and the hood of her jacket. She could hardly hear herself think over it._

_One child called something up to her, a crude, half-heard insult, and she felt her fingers curling in towards her palms instinctively, cheeks flushed with cold and rage. It was the same classmate who had stolen her paper at lunch. The drawing she'd worked so hard on – two purple and black blobs, morphing together, but it had meant something in her mind, and it had hurt when he'd torn it in two right in front of her and dropped the pieces into the trash can proudly._

_It was too much._ Too much _. This, on top of home, everyone always yelling, and the darkness gaping inside of her all the time trying to suck her in – she was SO ANGRY –_

_She was on her feet, swaying unsteadily on the bars, shouting down at him until her voice failed her, but before she could clamber back down to safety the wind swept viciously around her and she felt the empty air beneath her feet only moments before she was plummeting to the ground, teeth piercing and bloodying the inside of her mouth, the bones of her arms crunching loudly enough that that sleeping teacher came white-faced and running towards her –_

_She couldn't hear what she was saying, her mind gone numb, images coming unbidden –_

_Her father with his hands wrapped tight enough to bruise around her ankles, dangling her out the window, she couldn't have been more than three years old, why hadn't she remembered this before now, was that her mother crying or her own terrified sobbing –?_

_"_ _April, April, tell me your birthday, honey, can you feel this? Can you hear me? Has somebody called 9-1-1?!"_

_She squeezed her eyes shut and took a shuddering breath. It tasted of iron._

_Her scream was stolen by the wind, too, but hell – it was LOUD._

* * *

She was beginning to develop a theory, about the dreams.

She mentioned it to no one – not even Spyro – but it weighed heavily on her cracked mind even in the daytime, like an open wound, and she was increasingly worried that someone would catch on – that it was becoming obvious to everyone that she was slowly going insane.

The lingering images of the Dark Realms that haunted her in every waking moment of the day had been nagging her for weeks, almost too horrible to comprehend. She couldn't even put words to some of the things that she had seen beyond the portal – she was afraid to try, as if even speaking about the place would provide it a doorway into these Realms, and she – along with all of the others – might be sucked back into it, even as it came pouring out to corrupt every bright and innocent thing that it touched.

The Dark Master really _must_ be twisted to have survived there for so long, she thought with a fearful shudder. Or maybe it had made him twisted – maybe, before all of this, he had been only a minor threat, and the Ancients had only made it so much worse by deciding to contain rather than kill him.

If she had been imprisoned in somewhere half as terrifying… Cynder was terrified enough of what she had been crafted into here, in _this_ Realm. Had she been poisoned as a hatchling with the very same toxins that she'd inhaled in the Darkness?

Was she _hellspawn_?

In the end, she chose to stop thinking about it, if only to preserve the remnants of her self-esteem. The only thing she knew for certain was that things had changed the moment she had passed through that portal. Her mind was fragmented now, her abilities conceivably stolen from her forever – and she blamed Malefor for it with every burning, vengeful speck of her being.

She couldn't even feed now without feeling the uncomfortable absence of something inside of her where his magic had been. She felt empty.

Time seemed to pass strangely at the Temple, and Cynder grew less patient with each sunrise. The Guardians were puttering around, tending to the crystal beds in the gardens and the tunnels and seeming to do nothing else remotely useful. Cynder tried to feed from the crystals as she was supposed to, and to sleep regularly, to pretend everything was normal… but it was becoming clearer and clearer that it wasn't, and now _both_ of those things were becoming uncomfortable for her. She wanted to _do_ something, if only to make herself feel better. _Please_. _Just a distraction_. Ignitus had rejected her request for training, even when she had convinced Spyro to second her plea. He claimed that they were weak and far from ready for any sort of battle; nothing they could say would sway him.

Of course, goody-goody that he was, Spyro accepted this with more grace than Cynder felt she'd ever be able to muster and went on his merry way to do the same as the rest of them – that was to say, nothing. She wanted to spit fire sometimes just watching him talk with Ignitus like he was some sort of idol. It was appalling.

She'd come to revel in the fire master's wisdom, and his seemingly endless kindness towards her… but. Well. Perhaps she was just jaded. But Cynder still didn't like the way that Spyro fawned over him, clamored for his attention. It was… just a bit too much. Spyro didn't lack common sense, she knew that much, but he was understandably naïve, and this was bordering on hero worship. She wondered cynically if Ignitus secretly craved it – if he had spent so many years lonely, hopeless, and downtrodden that the mooning of a pupil was all that kept him going.

In _her_ opinion, Ignitus shouldn't allow it. But no one was asking for her opinion.

Really, though, she was in no position to judge anyone for mooning. Cyril had been lovely as well, so much so that Cynder couldn't even look at him for fear of crying and embarrassing herself. When there was little else to do and she could get away with lurking in the shadowy corners while the other dragons mingled, she watched him furtively, scales flushed and fluttering at the way that he moved. So sleek and silvery, with a rare bare-throated laugh that made her weak. He was a quiet, thoughtful sort, in a way that reminded her strongly of Spyro – which, admittedly, was probably the main reason that she preferred him.

That, and he was always doing things that would have made any young dragon swoon… like bringing her fresh bedding at odd hours, or asking if her head was feeling better.

She lied consistently, when he did this, which she should probably have felt worse about. But there was no reason to worry the others. She could cope with this alone.

Terrador's watchful gaze followed Cynder practically everywhere she went, which did nothing to settle her scales. And Volteer's jabbering was a mind-numbing constant that Cynder was always desperate to escape.

And so all of those things, in combination with her increasing paranoia, led Cynder inevitably to the empty corridor where Spyro had let slip that the training dummies were kept.

* * *

The air in the cramped little closet was stale and dusty with disuse, although Cynder was sure that Spyro had made use of this very equipment at least a month ago. Dust motes floated heavily in the thick, humid summer air, rendered visible by the low-burning torchlight in the corridor behind her. Her shadow was too-long, and reminded her too much of her old self – her old body.

Cynder took a single, cautious step inside – and immediately sneezed. She froze, twisting her neck backwards to make sure that she hadn't been followed. It was unreasonably late, and the other dragons should be well into their sleep cycles by now – even Spyro, who unlike Cynder had gotten over the nightmares after a fortnight of ragged edges, and now slept through most nights without screaming even once. But one could never be too careful.

When she'd regained her breath and her balance, she crept forward once more, keeping low to the ground as she surveyed the items at her disposal. There were perhaps twenty wooden training dummies in the guise of apes, complete with straw stuffing and leather simulated "armor".

Cynder scoffed, but secretly it was a little impressive – just not useful.

They were still right now, but Spyro had described the way they ran about when they were told to, trailing magical energy like sparks. They must be enchanted. Cynder circled one battered ape-dummy critically, searching out any sign of a crystal used for activation. It was propped against a wooden cage, looking rather sad and defeated with its neck slumped forward and it's armor coming loose around it's back, hanging off of its square shoulders. There were no crystals to be seen, and she bit back a disappointed huff.

_Of course._ Her mental voice had lost none of its snark, mocking Ignitus' deep, droning timbre nearly perfectly. _'This equipment is meant to be used with supervision only.'_

Well, she had no dragon magic at her disposal, now or possibly ever, so it seemed that she'd have to make do with beating on them the old fashioned way.

Backing away again, Cynder peered beyond the dummies to the racks of wooden weapons and mock-armor against the far right wall, and then up towards the hooks near the ceiling. The shape was too familiar, and she felt her scales on her back as she squeezed between two piles of limp ape dummies to get a better look. From the silver hooks hung long, thin dark chains coated in a thick layer of white dust, obviously untouched for many years. Cynder's entire body screamed at her to run, but she fought down the disturbing instinct, backing away slowly to make sure she hadn't missed anything else. Her ankles felt curiously heavy, as if something were curled around them, but when she looked down at them there was nothing but the shadows of the equipment, hardly even visible against her dark scales.

The closet was dominated largely by dummies and little else that held any interest to a magic-less adolescent dragon. There was a battered wooden chest in the corner, glowing faintly, which she could only assume contained specialized crystals which not even Spyro had probably been allowed to touch this early in his training. Those were also useless to her, but… it was interesting.

She noted it for later.

The room that she had taken to hiding in during the daytime was large enough for this purpose, but it was quite a ways away. Cynder shook her head and thought hard.

The Guardians always slept in the main chamber that lead out to the balcony, under the mosaic-distorted moonlight. But Terrador often woke before dawn to wander the corridors and occasionally check on the young dragons he considered his charges. Spyro, too, was always looking for her when he woke.

_If I start now_ , Cynder thought to herself anxiously. _Then I might be able to get four or five of these things tucked away before anyone notices…_

Sighing quietly, the black dragon reared up on her hind legs and set about clumsily re-tying the leather laces on the dummy in the dark.

She had her work cut out for her, but she'd be _damned_ if she couldn't defend herself later. Soon.

The apes wouldn't give her any leeway. She would have to be in the best shape she could be; she couldn't afford to let her reflexes dull, lazing around all day "recovering" as she'd been told to. Cynder wasn't a child. She didn't care how small she looked – she was no naïve dragonling like Spyro, no innocent angel as Spyro would like to believe.

She knew all too well what was out there, beyond the dreamlike safety of the Temple grounds. And she was prepared to rip throats out if she had to.

* * *

She beat the stuffing out of those dummies for the week afterward as if her life depended on it. While at first her body resisted, within a few short days she had remastered a good portion of the movements she'd been drilled on since hatchlinghood.

Cynder had spent a good portion of her short life in a body that had hardly seemed to belong to her. She remembered the quasi-freedom of being able to stretch her wings and feel them cast a shadow across the earth – but with every stretch had come pain, and her body had always ached, even after it had stopped growing quite so rapidly. Gaul had only laughed when she'd complained about the pain, and so she had been able to do nothing but watch the holes grow in the membranes between her bones, and clamp down on the nauseous pain whenever it came over her.

Her Master had no time for her weakness. She had had a part to play, and she would learn to play it flawlessly, or she would cease to be useful and join the other dragons from her nest, shells left shattered and stomped upon in the hollow Dragon Temple. At least, that's what she'd been told.

Gaul had been a ruthless taskmaster; he hated dragons with every last filthy hair on his body, and he aimed all of that resentment towards Cynder, who was helpless to do anything but take it and obey. She had learned to dodge and roll with the wind; to flare her wings and block her opponents from their escape; to use her tail like a spear-tipped whip. She had learned to slash with her growing claws, and to mercilessly wrap her jaws around fragile necks and jerk them until they snapped.

She also learned to inflict pain before death, to be cruel, to taunt her victims until they were broken without having been touched at all.

The dummies couldn't hear her, so she stayed silent except for her panting breaths and occasional furious growls as she rammed them over and over again with her head, her tail, and her bony little shoulders. Her diminutive stature had taken getting used to at first – it was a whole new style of fighting, from this angle, looking up at her 'opponents' that were up to three times her size. But it wasn't that much more difficult, and soon she was running up the walls and launching herself sideways into the helpless dummies so hard that they flew across the room and split open against the walls.

It shouldn't have been so surprising to her that the training was not enough to calm her mind. But the frustration that had knotted somewhere in her chest, wedged just beneath her frantic heart, was immoveable.

_At least,_ she thought wryly, _it keeps me from killing Sparx._

No amount of violence was enough to keep her thoughts completely quiet and in order. But the time passed more easily this way, even as she fretted and obsessed and remembered – and at the end of the night, having spoken to no one, she was finally tired enough to sleep. Several nights passed dreamlessly, blissfully, and Cynder almost began to feel hope that she had balanced herself out.

But Spyro was observant, and she couldn't hide from him forever.

It was a matter of luck that she hadn't yet accidentally activated a crystal. She knew that the moment it happened – when the glowing began, she scrambled backwards, spitting straw from her mouth and quaking as green light burst from the dummy's throat, where a crystal glinted in the low light. As it fell backwards, thrown off balance by her hasty retreat, the ground shook – Cynder felt terror seize her around the neck like a vice.

She was panicked. She couldn't move! The earth was shooting up in chunks from around the prone ape, and all she could think was –

_"_ _You had better be faster than that," Gaul threatened, shaking his staff above his head and calling down the purple-green light that always spoke of agony. She cringed away, mouth already gaping and bloody, shaking with fear._

_"_ _Come on, Cynder," he hissed mockingly, marching closer and prodding her roughly with the sickly verdant crystal at the tip of it. "Your Master expects better than this. Get up!"_

_Her hide hissed as the hot crystal burned a hole straight through one of the dark scales on her flank. It melted and warped back into place only seconds later, and Cynder looked away, sickened as she was forced to stumble back to her feet._

_"_ _I need to rest," she pleaded, her voice half-gravel, half-whine. She was not big enough yet, she wanted to explain, she just needed more time and then she could fight back –_

_Gaul's staff smacked her in the mouth and pain burst down through the roots of her fangs. She howled and dropped back to the floor as more green light splashed over her, the blood dripping from her lips, and the earth began to rumble menacingly and split apart beneath her feet –_

"Cynder!" Spyro cried, barreling into the room at a breakneck pace as Cynder began to shriek. She hardly had time to come back to herself and shake the fear-soaked memory from behind her closed lids before he was tackling the poor defenseless dummy into the wall, shattering the crystal in his claws.

He spun back to face her, that stricken expression lingering on his face. He searched her eyes. "Cynder? Are you alright?"

"I –" Cynder backed up and leaned against the cool stone of the wall, shuddering. She couldn't think of any way she could word it that would actually fool him. "I'm – fine. Just startled…"

Her heart was beating so wildly in her chest that she was sure he could hear it. The panic constricting her throat like the shackles she had worn only a short time ago refused to leave, and her voice was raspy with it – as if she needed any further humiliation. She fluffed out her wings to shield her face, huddling protected beneath them.

Spyro approached her slowly, concern etched in every part of his body. He was winded – she suddenly wondered how loudly he had screamed, and what she had said that had made him come so quickly from wherever he had been. In all likelihood, she realized with a sinking feeling, he had been sleeping… and she had woken him from his pleasant dreams with her stupid, senseless overreaction.

The more she considered it, the more ridiculous she felt, until she was pressing her forehead to the dirt. The shame crawled over her and dug under her scales and into her bones.

_Spyro wouldn't have reacted like this_ , she seethed at herself. _It's just MAGIC. You're a DRAGON. What did you expect?_

"You… weren't having a nightmare, were you." He said slowly. It didn't sound like a question so much as a tentative statement. Without even looking up, she knew that he was glancing around at the evidence piled about the room – the targets lining the walls, the dummies awaiting her awkward repairs heaped broken all atop each other off to the side, and the worn path of her paws, the line where her wingtip skimmed the wall each time she ran alongside it to gain momentum.

"No… No, I was…" She wished she could find the words. She felt like a dirty liar, lying here like this in her shame, having to be rescued from an inanimate object by a dragon with only a tiny fraction of her experience.

"Cynder, it's okay… I'm not mad," Spyro said cautiously as he came to rest his chin across the back of her neck comfortingly. She shifted as if to move away, but already his warmth was making that impossible, seeping into her and forcing her heartbeat to slow. "I've kind of been wondering where you've been lately, so I guess at least now I have an answer."

His good humor was too much to bear right now. Cynder took a ragged breath and let it out, shaking her head beneath his and rubbing her markings into the earth. "No, it's not okay, Spyro… I don't know what's happening to me."

"You're still recovering," he whispered, so earnest, even though she knew he was only parroting Ignitus' tireless mantra. "Why are you fighting it? You need to rest."

"I still hear him," she whispered brokenly. Spyro shut his mouth and just looked at her, gentle and coaxing her to keep talking. _How can you be so damn supportive of someone who tried to kill you half a dozen times?_ Her mouth was running without her now, in cracked whispers. "I still hear his voice, Spyro. I still see… I see Gaul – I hear him, and – and he's telling me that I have to focus, and do things, and…"

"That's not true anymore," Spyro offered. "You're safe here. Whatever happened to you before… You're free, here. No one is going to make you do anything that you don't want to, Cynder. We just want you to be okay."

_Okay?_ She couldn't muster incredulity but later she was sure that she would. She gritted her teeth. "He was all I could think about, Spyro," she bit out. "All that I was allowed to think about. I don't know how to get rid of him."

"My mind is playing tricks on me." She was glad that he hadn't asked her to look at him. She could still see Gaul's manic face in her mind's eye, and her wings trembled. "I keep having these dreams – and now even during the day, I see things. I see _Him_."

There was no question of which _Him_ she was talking about now. They both shivered.

Spyro nuzzled slowly against her, his pulse throbbing on top of hers, his breaths starting to calm. "I've been having dreams, too," he confessed tentatively. His eyes still roamed her face wonderingly, and if she'd had the capacity to she would have wondered what was so interesting about the way she looked. He did this too often lately, whenever they were alone.

She just slumped further towards the ground, unconvinced. _He's not getting it._ "I don't think that they're the same, Spyro."

They definitely weren't, actually – Spyro was extraordinary, and he probably had special, prophetic dreams or something, fitting of a purple dragon – but she had no way of convincing him without divulging the contents of her own. And she might… if she could properly remember them. But when it was all so shrouded in doubt and fear, Cynder couldn't justify troubling Spyro, too. She was clearly enough trouble for him as it was.

"I know you're scared, Cynder. But I'm scared too. You're not alone."

"I know."

They lapsed into semi-comfortable silence then. Slowly, the fear began to leech out of her: she visualized it siphoning from beneath her scales like thin black smoke and coalescing outside of her body, a huge dark shape made of plasma, with glowing hungry eyes – it took the shape of her old body, she realized, spreading huge wispy wings and silently opening its maw as if to shriek at her. But there was only silence.

When she opened her eyes, the room was empty, still dappled cheerfully with the light of the torches lining the walls. There was no terrifying silhouette standing over them.

She let herself relax, at last. Safe.

There was no one to harm them here. Not now… Not yet. This had all been an accident. Next time, she would be prepared; she wouldn't freeze or fall into a crazed panic the moment she made a wrong move. Not even if Gaul himself was coming for her throat.

"I wish that you hadn't seen me like this." She forced the words from her clenched jaw, unable to meet his eyes. She knew what she would see there.

_He's seen you much worse_ , her mind whispered traitorously.

"I don't think you're weak," he promised. As though that were the worst of her troubles. She choked back a laugh and laid back down against him, mentally bracing herself for the cleanup. There was still time left, and she had none to waste, so she would have to get up soon and continue her session.

"I'm way faster than you," she said, with exhausted flippancy. "So you'd better not think I'm weak… I'll get you." She felt him rub his snout along the slim line of her jaw and she arched her neck to allow him room. _Oh. That feels good._

"You're on," he said challengingly. Despite his words, he didn't move a muscle. They were perfectly comfortable where they were for the moment. In the background, she could hear Sparx coughing angrily, and she snorted with laughter both at Spyro's mocking tone and at his little familiar's outrage at their casual touching.

The mirth was almost enough to drain the last of the anxious tension from her body. But a lingering sense of dread remained.

She was falling apart. She could _feel_ it.

"After this," he was saying, looking suddenly entirely too cheerful. "We should go lie in the gardens for a while… I bet you're feeling tired. I know I will be, soon."

She felt herself nod but her mind remained preoccupied, even as she followed him into the center of the room to begin their sparring session.

Despite all of Spyro's clumsy attempts at comforting her, Cynder could feel her sense of self beginning to slip right back out of her grasp.

* * *

_She couldn't tell if she was asleep or if her nightmares had taken shape in the shadows playing on the walls of her childhood bedroom. There was one with huge, tattered wings that she was sure would eat her; another, mangy and shaking a stick at her as though to beat her with it; and the last, most terrifying, a pair of huge deranged eyes set in a dark, crackling hide, fangs like stalactites come to sink down through her flesh –_

_April kicked the sheets frantically from around her feet, fumbling for the journal stashed beneath her pillow and the stub of a pencil wedged into its binding._

_She had to draw it. Her fingers shook, but she forced them to move, to put down stroke after stroke until the lead was flat against the wood. She couldn't let them disappear this time._

_If she was going to be eaten, she at least wanted someone to know by what._

* * *

"No… no…" Cynder groaned, twisting and writhing in the dirt. "No – STOP! Please, stop it, I don't want this!"

She could not be sure if she was awake or sleeping. The flashbacks and the lapses in consciousness had become so erratic and intense that she could never really tell, anymore. No matter how tightly she squeezed her eyes shut, the unwelcome memories wouldn't cease – the strange dreams wove between them, frightening flashes of another violent world and another fleshy body that seemed so stretched and ungainly it was practically useless.

It was as if she'd accidentally unlatched the wrong door somewhere in the secret center of her mind and let all of this in, she thought miserably. The rips in the oily fabric of the Dark Realms sprang to mind, glimpses of other realities, but she discarded that frightening idea quickly. It was her own stupid fault – it was her own actions that tormented her, and the rest must be her punishment. It was only what she deserved; it had only been a matter of time until it all came back to haunt her.

She had spent several days like this, wracked with guilty spasms and prone to fits of sudden, terrifying hyperventilation. Twice, Ignitus had nearly caught her during one of her paroxysms, but she had managed to successfully avoid practically everyone else.

There was a strength to her small size and drab coloring that she hadn't considered until then.

The sun continued to rise and fall, and the moons continued to loom larger and more ominous above them. Ignitus had shuffled about for a while, muttering something about the Eternal Night – some great evil lunar eclipse, which Cynder could hardly be bothered to worry about considering her already deteriorating mental state. She hadn't tried very hard to decipher it. She had, in the depths of her gut, the hideous certainty that none of it mattered… she began to wonder if she would even be alive long enough to see this supposed evil.

Her mind was weakening, she surmised. She was still decaying after all. Removing Malefor's magic from her body had only slowed the process…

But it was all catching up to her.

Her personal training had ground temporarily to a halt, except for short, frenzied bursts when she was so overcome by her own helplessness that she simply needed something to take it all out on. Spyro, she knew, sometimes watched her from the hallway; the scales on the back of her neck prickled and burned in response to his concerned attention, but she never turned to meet his eyes as she lunged and tore at the dummies. He seemed to realize that company wasn't what she wanted right then, or needed.

Twice more, the dummies' crystals were shattered, and Cynder felt no remorse. It was an empty symbolic victory – but any victory would do, now. Anything to make her feel useful. Like she wasn't defenseless, wasn't just a limp leftover of the previous phase of a war much larger than she'd ever grow to be again.

Her dedication was evident in the skills she remastered in quick succession over the course of those two weeks – she could find her target precisely in a darkened room, she could sever a dummies' head cleanly from its shoulders with nothing but the lash of her dagger-tipped tail or a swift slash. She grew used to her smaller proportions in short order, and painstakingly learned to use them to her advantage, crawling about in secret through the Temple at all hours.

Cynder found that, while she may still have been small, she was _deadly_ again.

And oh, how she had missed the feeling.

Therapeutic as it was, as the time dwindled, her focus began to slip as well. Her training suffered until she couldn't even muster the willpower to go back to her makeshift arena, not even to drag her dummies back into their hiding places – she was all but catatonic now, and her violent sleep-writhing was the most activity she'd had in at least two sunrises. Her muscles ached simultaneously with fatigue and disuse. The crystal gardens seemed too far away, sometimes, so she just went to sleep drained rather than dragging herself outside to rub against them and rejuvenate herself.

She didn't deserve any of this luxury. They should have left her to suffer – had they left her in Concurrent Skies, just lying on the ground, she would have been eaten by the wurms or dragged into their electrical pools to slowly deteriorate and drown. The threat would have been eliminated.

Realistically, she knew, she couldn't fight her demons off forever. Not here. Not where her inevitable failure would mean putting others in danger.

Spyro, and Ignitus… the other Guardians… they'd treated her with unbearable kindness, even when her unpredictable moods had gone wild and left her lashing her tail, coldly silent. She was far from stable. They just… didn't mind it. They seemed to have an endless affection for her, no matter how much she tried to put an emotional distance between them. The only one who didn't bear it with horrible patience was Spyro, who managed to look wounded any time she averted her eyes from his. She wanted to cross the distance between them and nuzzle under his jaw – which became more defined by the day, it seemed, and she couldn't pretend that she didn't admire the minute changes she saw in his physique – but there were too many things between them now, her flashbacks and her hard certainty that she was coming undone.

He couldn't see the poison that her Master had left beneath her scales, invisible but still eating away at her. He couldn't see the deepening bruises that the Dark Realms had left inside her mind. What if she became a portal? What if her body became just a vessel again, a container for evil energy, or a puppet for something much worse than Malefor?

She wasn't rid of him. Cynder knew that now, and it stole her confidence like the traitorous wind from beneath her wings.

Soon, she reasoned, she would be just another threat – or, worse, an empty shell that might be callously used as bait if it were found.

There was only one thing she had left to ask, and she would ask it of Ignitus, with no one else the wiser. It was an innocent question. She just wanted – _needed_ – to know. If she would have to leave, and she would, then she would be damned if she didn't at least get some answers.

She found him before the pool, attempting fruitlessly to scry the future in the softly shimmering water. Cynder sheathed her claws and approached with wordless caution; her tiny, padding feet still made too much noise in the silent chamber, but Ignitus didn't immediately look up to greet her. He seemed lost in his troubled musings.

She drew up beside him to peer into the water. Her reflection's distortion on the mirrored surface was enough to make him sit up and blink at her in acknowledgement. "Why, Cynder. This is a pleasant surprise."

Cynder levelled a serious glance at him and sat gently on the stone beside the pool. Her wings tucked more tightly against her side, despite her best efforts to get her nerves under control. "I wanted to know… If you're willing to tell me."

He regarded her with quiet amusement. "Of course, if there's something that I can tell you, Cynder, I will. What's on your mind?"

She took a deep, steadying breath, but it only left her heart beating harder in anticipation. "I want to know what I am. What… what my mother was."

Ignitus assessed her with a slow, approving nod. "I thought that you would ask. I am surprised it took you so long to come… oh," he sighed. "But I understand that it has been hard for you, being cooped up in recovery these past few weeks. You have been remarkably patient with us, young dragon. I hope that I can tell you all that you want to know."

Like Volteer, Cynder reflected as she settled in to listen to the elder dragon speak, Ignitus could certainly _talk_. But there was something in the measured quality of his voice that drew her in. Made her want to listen. There would be nothing boring about this conversation, she realized. She was here because she wanted to be.

"What's so special about a midnight dragon?" she asked. Ignitus drew himself up and took a breath, as if preparing a speech. Cynder closed her eyes, praying to the Ancients that her broken mind would play no tricks on her now.

"You know the legend of the purple dragon," he began, his voice a low and careful. "The master of all the elements… Yes, a purple dragon is a very special creature. Spyro, especially." She found herself nodding, already entranced. "But there are others… other legends, and other special creatures."

"You see, Cynder, dragons have always been a race of very proud, very talented beasts… And every dragon is born with an innate connection to an element that they can learn to harness, to use to their advantage… and, ideally, for the benefit of _all_ those around them." The sadness in his voice was, for a moment, overwhelming, and she knew that he was thinking of her Master – of what he might have been, if only he had chosen another path. "There are many types of dragons, and many elements. It would take me an age to list them all."

"But there are some more rare, more revered than others." She felt his gaze boring into her forehead, the strange light markings there, and her eyes flew open to meet his. He nodded, chuckling. "Yes, among them is the midnight dragon. You are the last of them, Cynder. For now." He savored the words, and she committed them to memory, swallowing. "The last born midnight dragon."

"You said that my mother was…" she began uncertainly. "I mean… if she was so special, why was she…?"

"Cynder, nest mother is a prestigious title among dragons." Ignitus sounded almost smug; he clearly did not have enough of an audience, regularly, to foist his history lessons upon, because he was obviously relishing in this one.

"I don't understand," she admitted.

_What's so prestigious about laying a lot of eggs?_

She couldn't imagine herself in the same position. Ignitus chuckled, as if he could see into her mind. "I cannot expect you to. You did not grow up where you rightfully should have, Cynder, and so you never bore witness to your mother's many suitors. Andromeda was very sought after… We had our romance, once," he sighed wistfully. "More than a century ago. She was very talented, far stronger than most… If she had only decided to last another decade, perhaps Malefor would not have stood a chance."

Cynder squinted at the elder dragon's expression, trying to determine how much of an exaggeration that might be. She huffed. "But what am I supposed to be able to do? What could _she_ do?"

_I want to be special,_ she didn't say. It seemed pointless now. She would be gone from here, isolated from her kind once again, as soon as she knew what she needed to know. _I just want to know what I should expect, if I'm wrong. If I really am just recovering. If I have normal abilities after all._

She doubted it.

Ignitus took his time, as he always did. He seemed to like to make everything into a story; and Cynder had to admit that it did make it much easier to listen to.

"A midnight dragon is a creature of shadows… Not as you know them," he added, seeing the look of open dismay in her eyes. "Not all shadows are evil, Cynder, though in these difficult times I know that that may be hard to understand… Darkness, like any element, has traditionally been revered by dragons, and like any other ability it can just as easily be practiced for noble means as it can You, and Spyro too, have grown in a world where darkness is synonymous with sinister intentions – but that has not always been the case."

He weaved his way slowly about the room, dragging her eyes with him. This part wasn't easy to listen to, mostly because she simply couldn't believe him; darkness had protected her and terrorized her in turn for as long as she could remember, and she had no say in which way it would turn. Shaking off the unease this brought back to the surface, she let her eyes roam over the wall, following Ignitus' massive head. She noticed, for the first time, the minute gilded symbols on each of the torch brackets, and she recognized it though she had hardly seen it before – the written language of dragons.

It had been so long since she'd been taught to read them, very grudgingly, by Gaul, but she still managed to sound out the fragments in her head.

_Fire_ , read one. The next: _Ice_. She followed the row of them all the way around the room, eyes gone round with realization. _Lightning. Earth. Wind_ …

She belatedly realized that Ignitus had stopped speaking; he was following the direction of her gaze, and when their eyes met again he nodded approvingly.

_Shadow_.

"Your mother loved to play with the shadows in the firelight," Ignitus murmured wistfully, his eyes drawn closed in remembrance. "She wrapped them about each of the eggs in the hatchery, to keep them warm… To keep them safe."

He seemed to deflate slightly when he opened his eyes to see not Andromeda, but Cynder sitting there before him, small and inadequate. Or at least, that was how she felt. She couldn't blame him. He smiled, his wizened lips curving inward over his teeth. Looking at him now, she could hardly understand how he'd ever seemed threatening to her. If she didn't know any better she would say that his fighting days were long past him.

"Shadows are like living things, Cynder. You may have noticed already that you feel most comfortable in partial darkness – I would not be surprised if you could see much better in the night than Spyro or I ever could."

Would she use the ability to bend shadows, even if she could? After everything she had seen and done? Cynder picked at the question glumly. She couldn't even imagine the things that Ignitus was saying; in her mind's eye, Andromeda was regal and benevolent and could not possibly have anything in common with her. She couldn't picture her wrapped up in living shadows like Gaul or like the Master. She didn't _want_ to.

" _But,_ " Ignitus said pointedly, drawing her attention back to him. "A midnight dragon can do much, much more than merely wielding shadow as an elemental tool. There are legends, going back thousands of years… that the black dragons could travel between realms."

"You see, Cynder, in many ways your survival was very fitting." Ignitus took on a gentle tone that Cynder wasn't sure that she liked. _What are you about to tell me that I don't want to hear?_ She thought suspiciously. "A black dragon and a purple dragon are, in many ways, complementary."

She couldn't quite contain her doubt. "Spyro and I are nothing alike. He's…"

_He's good. He's brave, and loyal, and strong, and I don't think he's ever done anything wrong in his entire life…_

The old dragon chuckled. "That is exactly the point, though. You are each other's foils, you and Spyro… that is what will make you great allies."

Grumbling, Cynder settled back again to listen. No matter how much she disagreed, the point was moot, and she was anxious to hear whatever else Ignitus was willing to reveal to her about her ancestry and the role she might have filled if she hadn't been ruined.

"I have not told Spyro yet," he was saying, staring down into the pool again as if lost in thought. "But the powers of the purple dragon are far more numerous and more complicated than the mastery of multiple elements."

She wondered how far back she had had to dig in his undoubtedly lengthy memory to remember this information for her, and pass it along – she wasn't sure that anyone else could have given it to her, where any of the remaining dragons had even fled to.

"Forgive me – I have been meaning to ask you, since your return, but could not think of a way to bring it up that would not upset you." Cynder straightened her shoulders haughtily at that, as if to prove that she was made of tougher stuff than Ignitus clearly thought. His eyes twinkled indulgently. "Tell me, Cynder, what was it that Spyro did to return you to your natural form?"

He looked as if he already knew the answer. Cynder had to pause and think about it – he was right, the memory was more than a little upsetting – and answered slowly, uncertainly, "Some kind of purple energy…" She could feel it still, ripping holes through her chest and burning her up from the inside out.

"I could hear them," she whispered, epiphany dawning on her face. She looked up through suddenly watering eyes at Ignitus, who stared back at her intently. "The Ancients. They… they – _oh._ " _They ripped the evil out of me._

He looked deeply satisfied with this information, bowing his head with a slow sigh. "That was the Aether. It is powerful spiritual force – the combined power of all of our ancestors, every dragon that has ever lived before us. And only a purple dragon can pull the threads of time in order to call upon it."

It seemed impossible, but Cynder could feel somewhere knotted deep in her gut that it was right. She swallowed down her awe, but her voice still wavered a bit when she asked, "Does that mean that Malefor can use it, too? The Aether?"

She had seen that purple light that Spyro had hurled at her before, she realized, and then felt horribly sick. Malefor's version of it had been murky, threaded with blood and hatred, but it had been the same color at the core, and it had been just as potent.

"Not exactly, but… yes." Ignitus sighed heavily. He sat gingerly on the floor beside her, looking suddenly world weary. "Cynder, I hope – although, of course, what you say and do is now your choice –" He paused meaningfully, as if to reassure her, _and it always will be_. It did nothing to quell her anxiety. "I hope that you will not run off and repeat all of this to Spyro. He is not ready yetto know that Malefor is also a purple dragon… I fear that it would only dishearten him."

Cynder hardly had to think about it to agree. Though she was loathe to admit it, she knew that Spyro was too deeply insecure right now about everything to do with his powers to comprehend the idea that he and Malefor had been cut from the same cloth.

_But they're nothing alike, either,_ she thought, gazing up shrewdly at her mentor as if he could explain it for her. It seemed unlikely that he would. Ignitus would only ramble about things that he felt it was time to share, and Cynder kept expecting him to get up and dismiss her without warning when he decided that he had divulged enough.

"But I am getting off topic again. I apologize. As I was saying – a purple dragon has a connection to the Aether, and the unique ability to manipulate time. But a midnight dragon is said to walk between worlds, and to absorb the things that they need from others who step in their shadows." The serious way that he said it made it difficult for Cynder to calm her racing heart as it beat more and more frantically. "While a purple dragon, like Spyro, could _stop_ time, or call upon the Ancients in a moment of need, a midnight dragon – like yourself – could pluck the anger out of her opponents simply by sending her shadows to halt them, and travel sideways through time… and perhaps into other dimensions."

The mention of other dimensions nearly had her gagging. All that she could see, and smell, for that agonizing moment was the grotesque landscape of the Dark Realms and Malefor's huge bloodshot eyes, exactly where she had left them.

Ignitus was watching her still, and she had to swallow several times until the tingling passed and she trusted herself to open her mouth again. She wasn't sure how much longer she could endure this. She was falling apart – surely everyone could tell, by now?'

"Maybe you're right," she mumbled.

"You are still so young," Ignitus rumbled. He sounded ancient then, staring once more down into his crystalline pool as if it held all and none of the answers he was searching for. "Too young." She had the distinct feeling that he wasn't only talking about her, now.

When he met her eyes again, his voice held a note of finality. "Greatness will come to you, young dragon. You do not have to go looking for it. Remember that…"

She couldn't speak, her mouth hanging open helplessly. The elder dragon sighed and tipped his massive head towards his chest as if in prayer. "Although I fear that it may come to you sooner than you ever should have had to bear it."

* * *

Cynder left Ignitus alone in his silent chamber, mind whirling with amazement and with the aching loneliness, the burden of knowledge. Spyro would be enthralled if she went to him – she could see it, how his eyes would widen, the excited way that his wings would flutter as she told him of her mother, and of the way that dragons had lived before Malefor. He knew as little about their heritage as she did. He'd be thrilled to know that she, too, would have been "special". That he wasn't _technically_ alone.

There was nothing she could say, though, not now… not when it was crucial that he feel their separation before it even began.

The idea of it was unbearable. She could feel her chest caving in, her ribcage collapsing around her stuttering heart, at the thought of losing her first friend. She realized with a horrible start that she loved him, as more than a nestmate and more than just a friendly acquaintance. He was not just the only other dragon her age left in this Realm. He was not just her savior and her confidante. He was…

An image swam before her, the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled and how his golden horns gleamed so beautifully in the torchlight as he nuzzled against her, offering any and every comfort that she could possibly ask of him. Spyro. _Spyro_. She felt his name in every miserable, heavy beat of her heart. He had done enough just by fighting her, stopping her, but still he had rescued her… still, he had taken her into his fold, given her a family, mentors, nourishment, love… still, he had listened to her, talked to her, told her that she was worthy, that they were not so different.

That was a lie. Spyro was anything but a liar. Maybe he didn't know that it was a lie, then. All the better that she was going to demonstrate it for him, so that he would be left without a doubt.

_I'm so sorry, Spyro,_ she thought with anguish. Her heart felt constricted. _I want to be there for you, too. I do..._

Her head began to spin and her mind began to splinter, just as she turned the corner and watched Terrador stop dead in his tracks. He ambled with surprising speed to her side as her legs began to give.

"You're looking out of sorts, youngling," he said, catching her with one massive paw. She hardly felt the coarseness of his scales. She could see two realities at once, she realized dimly – one was here, the caverns, the knotted roots and packed earth and moss all around them, and the other some pale clinical setting, long thin appendages covered in some white wrapping, stained red. Her heart began to flutter in panic.

Terrador shushed her, and she clamped her mouth shut although she couldn't remember uttering a sound. "You aren't making sense," he said lowly. "Let me find Cyril – have him look at you. It's likely just a passing illness."

"I feel…" she whimpered, but he only shushed her again. His snout gently touched her head.

"You don't appear to have a fever. I'll bring him to you. Wait here."

_Corrupted_ , Ignitus' voice whispered again in her mind. _If you had not been corrupted…_

She was causing them so much unnecessary worry just by being here. She was nothing but a burden. No one else could see it – or maybe, she thought suddenly, maybe they just didn't want to. Ignitus knew that she was corrupted. He knew, and he let her stay. He didn't want to confront the reality that she was unfixable. She had been damned at her hatching, and not even the love of other dragons could cure her now.

"No, no I'm – I'm fine," she panted. She had to pull herself together. Terrador did not look convinced; she made an effort then to still her heaving chest, even though her lungs felt panicked, starved for air. The images of red-and-white terror and flashing lights continued every time she blinked, but she could do nothing except ignore them.

They refused to be forgotten, though. Fear permeated the air around her, thick and suffocating like smog, and the light began to disappear behind the darkness that it brought with it. She felt her throat seize as she tried to call out for help.

"I don't want this," she whimpered, her voice lost to the abyss. The Dark Realms stared back at her. "I don't want to be like this!"

The Dark Master chuckled somewhere, rumbling and vibrating through the Realms to her, shaking her down to her very bones and deeper still. She felt achingly empty, but so full of so many, too many thoughts, whirling around her – ideas and dreams and terrible prophecies – Cynder forced herself to suck in a big breath, as she had in Convexity. The realization that came crashing around her when she regained her vision left her paralyzed and mute to each of Cyril and Terrador's concerned questions.

They shuffled her off to her nest in the end, tucking her into it so gently she hardly felt them touching her. Spyro stayed anxiously by her side that night as she laid prone and almost entirely still but for every unwanted breath. Ignitus didn't come – maybe she'd asked him not to. She couldn't remember now.

The thought throbbed at the base of her skull, painful and powerful, demanding her attention. She stared at the insides of her eyelids bleakly and felt them slide around, loose and untethered, on the insides of her skull. She couldn't do this anymore. Not to them. Not to herself. She couldn't even find the strength to berate herself for ever believing, even in the secret stubborn parts of her head, that she could stay here. That this could work. That she was better, would get better, would become a respectable dragon. The picture she'd conjured in her head of her at Spyro's side, lithe but deadly, determined, as a force of light in the darkness… it had shattered the moment she'd realized that the dreams weren't ordinary.

It had only been a matter of time, really, before she had to cut those fragile ties she'd made here. She hadn't wanted to acknowledge it but she knew it to be true. Part of her had always known it.

Spyro's breaths pained her as well. She could feel his concern even while he slept, more tense and fitful than she'd ever felt him. This was the second time they'd slept together.

It would have to be the last.

_I have to leave._


	3. Part 3: The Journey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first Cynder-strikes-out-on-her-own chapter! I love seeing her regain her independence, to be quite honest - it doesn't really feel right to read about her weak and dependent on the other dragons when we all know how capable she is. I'm pretty fond of this part of the story too. Lots of Cynder passing out and reminiscing about life under Gaul ahead... But that's sort of a thing through the whole fic, so it shouldn't be too surprising. This one's a bit shorter than the last chapter but there's plenty more to come.

She was ready to leave immediately, but the risk of being caught held her to the Temple another two days. It was difficult to contain herself once she had made the decision. But she did it, if only for Spyro's sake.

Ignitus kept talking about the lunar eclipse like a bad omen, and she just knew – deep somewhere in her chest, in the back thorny part of her mind that she was once trapped in – that she had to leave before it happened.

But not _too_ soon. Or else Spyro would have the time to get distracted, to come looking for her when he should be preparing for the next battle.

The last days trickled by at an agonizing snails' pace. Cynder wandered openly through the halls for once, meeting the surprised smiles of the elder dragons with a bow of her head each time to disguise her guilt, and her intentions. She spent the afternoons in the gardens, avoiding Terrador and Spyro in equal measure, and regrettably also avoiding Cyril after he'd tried earnestly to convince her to try meditation.

The sleeping Guardians were a commonplace obstacle for her now, after weeks of sneaking around. Carefully, Cynder climbed part way up the wall, her claws sinking into the ivy like little ropes; she looked back critically after a few moments of careful scaling and deemed herself high enough to turn and kick herself off of the wall, spreading her wings to glide over their gently rising-falling backs and bellies, setting down lightly on the other side of the room.

She turned to look back at them sadly, one last time. Her gaze roamed over the regal shape of Ignitus' massive wings… The strength of Terrador's shoulders, and the battle scars he wore… Volteer's unique markings, the way he twitched even in his sleep, as though he couldn't even keep up with himself. A heavy sadness weighed at her heart as she took in Cyril's sleeping form. He had been the sweetest of them all… and she would not even have the decency to tell him goodbye.

 _This is the right choice_ , she reminded herself forcefully as she eased the heavy oaken door leading to the garden open and shut again behind her. _I'm not doing this on a whim… I'm not bad for leaving like this, even if it feels horrible. Even if they think that I'm a traitor…_

That was her most visceral fear now. Would Spyro think that she had left to rejoin the apes? Would Ignitus? She didn't want them to think that she had taken what she needed from them and then left to return to her role of Malefor's favorite pet. But what other way was there?

They would think what they would think. She had to focus on putting some distance between herself and the Temple, before she changed her mind. Before something struck her in just the right place and made her weak, made her selfish.

She kept her mind firmly on all of these things as she crept out into the garden, following the path by the light of the moon. She almost failed to recognize Spyro's voice, she was so focused on her task; the sight of him drew her up short.

"Cynder? What are you doing out here? It's dangerous." He made a sweeping move to cut her off before she could walk any further from the Temple, and she stopped short, narrowing her eyes in frustration. Didn't he know that _she_ was dangerous?

"You shouldn't have followed me, Spyro."

"That's good enough for me!" Sparx said anxiously, gesturing wildly at Spyro – she strongly suspected that Sparx hadn't liked this idea to begin with. He had grown more and more suspicious of her in the past week, to the point where she was certain that everyone would feel safer if she left. _She_ would feel like they were safer, at least. "Let's go. See ya!"

"Please, don't make this harder for me than it already is."

"I'm just trying to understand." He looked… horribly wounded, all wide eyes and slumped shoulders. Cynder winced as the guilt crept further into her gut.

 _I'm doing the right thing_ , she reminded herself. She was dangerous. She couldn't control herself… her mind did not belong to her, and she needed to be far away from here. _I've caused enough damage._

She shook the thoughts from her head, slowly and deliberately. She couldn't meet his eyes. "I'm leaving, Spyro. I don't belong here. After all I've done… All I've put you through… I can't stay."

He sounded pained. "Cynder, nobody blames you for what happened."

_That's not true. I do._

"Huh, I do. Speak for yourself." Sparx muttered.

"Sparx…" Spyro reprimanded, scowling at his friend. But Cynder felt his words right down to her bones. They tore at her, but she had needed to hear them; she couldn't afford to let her resolve waver now.

"No, Sparx is right." Cynder lifted her head and said the next words very firmly, wanting desperately for Spyro to take them to heart. "And every day that goes by, I'm reminded of it."

She hated to manipulate him this way. He was stretching his heart out to her, so wide-open and vulnerable, looking at her with so much sympathy it nearly made her sick. But if she didn't spin it to him like this, then he would come after her – and that would only put him in more danger. She was so, so sick of putting everyone around her in so much danger. "Spyro, your place is here. Your destiny is here."

She looked hard down at the ground, as if it held the answers. She found that if she focused on the shadows she could make believe that they were crawling towards her, obeying her and trying to offer her their comfort. "But mine is somewhere out there for me to find."

"Cynder…" His eyes searched her face wildly, voice gone whisper-thin with emotion. "I don't want you to go." He paused and then added, awkwardly, "Your eyes are beautiful tonight."

She met his eyes, finally, startled by the desperate admission. Her scales flattened against her. Overtaken by emotion, she could do nothing but turn away from him, choking out what might be the last words she ever spoke to him.

"Goodbye, Spyro."

There were so many things that she wanted to say. That she couldn't say. This goodbye could not be more than it was. If this was the only thing that she could do to protect him, then so be it.

She'd sever their tentative newborn friendship cleanly and walk swiftly away before he could think to follow her. She would let the world swallow her up, back into the darkness from which she'd come. She'd never hurt anyone ever again.

Not if she could help it.

She wouldn't _let_ herself become his enemy again.

She wouldn't be Malefor's pawn, or his prodigy. She would remove all usefulness from herself. Fade into the background. Flee.

The undergrowth tangled around her slim ankles, but she refused to let it slow her down. She jumped through clumps of thorns, hardly feeling them pierce the pads of her paws, and tripped over knotted roots rendered invisible by the darkness. There was no illusion of glory here; she was running away, no matter what she'd told Spyro.

The action was born of helplessness, but as she felt her consciousness suddenly slipping out from under her, she was absolutely certain that she had made the right choice, and finally – _finally_ – shaped her own future.

 _This_ is _the right choice._

* * *

_She was twelve and she was cutting her wrists in thin, jagged lines with unbent staples and notebook wires while her parents screamed at each other just beyond her bedroom door. Her hands were shaking; the blood was running down her wrists and dripping onto her pajama pants. She didn't know how she would explain that later. She didn't remember what she had even put on before bed. She had school in the morning –_

* * *

Cynder felt her eyes flutter briefly open as her mind jolted painfully back into her body. She realized dimly that she didn't know where she was. Her head ached fiercely. The safety of the Temple was a distant memory already – a pang of regret, and a note of rising panic made her wings flare out and she gasped as she felt the membrane tear against a jagged piece of branch.

* * *

_She was thirteen, she was at a slumber party because anywhere was better than home, and there were boys there but her mother didn't know._

_The boys leered at her chest even though it was covered, at her red bitten lips, and the girls smirked at her standing awkwardly in the corner in her baggy clothes, her out-of-season sleeves, her ratty red hair and her freckles._

_Somebody produced a dozen cans of beer from a bulging backpack and they were passed around; she felt the cool metal in her warm palm and tried to take comfort in it even though the scent of booze made her shake. The other girls shoved her into the circle. An empty blue wine bottle pilfered from the recycling bin, lying on its side at the center._

_"_ _Seven minutes," Lynn reminded her snidely, holding up the wrong number of fingers. She's too intimidated by all of this to say anything. She puts on a brave face, though, curls her lip and flips her hair as she's trained herself to do._

_"_ _Only seven?" she said. She had no idea what they'd do for that long, trapped among the musty coats. A stale, fearful taste coats her tongue at the thought. (Or maybe that was just the beer.) She hated closets. She hated the dark. She hated the way her mother sounded when she cried, on the phone and under her father's hands, and when she came back from the hospital without her baby bump, staring at her hands as if she could still see the blood._

_She hated men, for all the things they did, and she hated boys, too – but the way they looked at her was addictive._

_And this was still better than home._

_Anything. She'd do anything. She'd prove her worth. She just couldn't go home tonight._

_The boy's name was Jake, and he shoved his tongue in his mouth instead of asking for hers. The closet slammed shut behind them and she felt her throat seize with panic, silencing her, not that he was waiting for her to speak. He wasn't interested in talking._

_"_ _Relax," he said, reaching around to make an embarrassing attempt and unhooking her bra. And the worst part is that she didn't think he meant to be mocking._

_Men, they were just like this, she thought. They had to be. Because otherwise, somebody would do something. Stop them._

_The only thing she could think as he undressed her like a limp Barbie doll was that she was eternally grateful that it was too dark for him to see her scars._

* * *

When she regained consciousness, dawn was breaking pale and pink through the trees. With a groan, Cynder forced herself to her feet – she wobbled on her sore legs, her wings dragging on the ground, and searched through desperate bleary eyes for any kind of shelter.

The absence of Spyro already twisted around her heart like constricting vines, but she resolutely ignored it. She was in enough pain – she didn't need to dwell on things like that, relationships she'd ruined before she ever even had a choice in the matter.

She found her shelter in the form of a fallen log, hollowed over the years no doubt by one of the tribes that had gone in search of new land to settle with the news of her approach.

It was damp inside, but the moss softened the bare wood just enough, and Cynder fell into an exhausted dreamless sleep practically the moment she tucked herself in against it.

Cynder wondered uneasily how long she had slept. She had no one that she could ask, and the woods remained silent and sun-dappled as she wandered warily down what she suspected was a deerpath in search of water to drink – she was terribly thirsty, and terribly lonely on top of that.

It was clearly daytime, wherever she was now – late afternoon if she had to guess – and she felt deeply, utterly refreshed in a way that she hadn't managed in weeks. The log that she had woken in had been perfectly cool and shady; the forest was shaded as well, but the heat seemed to rise off of everything, and Cynder found herself regretting her decision to start her trek while the sun was still high and hot in the sky. The earth was beginning to slant downward, and she could only hope that it was leading her into a valley. Valleys meant water.

It might have been days… maybe even a week, though she really hoped not. She suspected that even if the creatures here could speak to her they wouldn't have much of a sense of time, and even _then_ they probably wouldn't want to speak to _her_.

She could have sworn that the squirrels were eyeing her nervously from the corners of their beady eyes as they scampered from branch to branch.

 _Okay… Maybe I'm projecting. A little bit,_ she thought to herself with a quiet sigh.

Any noise was muted by the thickness of the moss underfoot. The wide trunks of the evergreen trees seemed to absorb the sounds of her humming along with the chatter of the small creatures and insects, leaving her feeling lonelier than she'd been in quite a long time. The long shadows that fell across her path like rifts deepened as the day wore on, though they didn't seem to be providing any real relief from the heat. She grew more and more curious, until she couldn't take it anymore. She had to try again.

"Okay," she said, out loud this time. She stopped in the center of the shadow of a tall pine and glanced around for anything that might trigger her abilities to spontaneously begin working. _Spyro had it so easy…_ "Okay. Ignitus said that I should be able to…"

With her eyes closed and her mind as clear as she could make it, she focused on what she could remember – Ignitus' wise old face peering down at her as he spoke of what her mother could do, what she had been born to do, and Cyril's lilting voice gently telling her to meditate. _Wrap the shadows around you_ , she heard Ignitus' voice tell her. With a pang, she realized that she missed him already, and that if she were ever to see him again the sad look in his eyes would probably be the end of her.

 _Focus_ , she chided herself. Feel the shadows… gather them up. She sucked in a sharp breath through her nose as she extended her mental presence tentatively outwards, as Cyril had tried to describe, searching for anything that felt familiar.

There was something there, something vaguely comforting in the surrounding dimness. It throbbed weakly, a second heartbeat beside her own. Convexity flashed briefly before her eyes. Cynder swallowed and held her breath, her dry throat spasming in protest as she narrowed her focus down to that elusive affinity – it danced just out of her reach, whispering and tickling at the edges of her consciousness but never letting her touch it.

"Come on," she whispered, visualizing the crystallized boundary in her mind and pushing past it. It shattered into a thousand razor-sharp pieces that rained among the thorns and the wreckage of her past self, resonating through her like shrapnel through honey, slow-motion. The shadows fled back from her as if frightened. She leapt after them, hyperventilating, and they flitted away like a swarm of tiny gnats, whispering and taunting her.

"Damn it!" she shouted. Her voice rang through the wood like a battle cry, startling a small flock of birds into the air with indignant squawks. She hardly heard them, searching desperately back through the crevices of her mind, but to no avail. They wouldn't let her close enough to so much as graze them.

The thorny back part of her brain began to ache from the strain. _Too damaged after all_ , she thought bitterly.

The branches thinned above her as she stalked down the path, still burning with disappointment and shame. The sun was descending rapidly toward the horizon like a falling star, but it was still unbearably hot to be walking out in the open. Cynder wondered how long she'd been walking. Her failed experiment had to have taken some time; she'd woken late, but she'd hardly stopped at all otherwise, and most importantly she still had no idea where she was.

 _I wonder if Ignitus had a map lying around anywhere that I could have nicked…_ she wondered idly. Her thirst was really starting to distract her.

A cloud passed over the sun for a few blessed moments and Cynder groaned appreciatively as she shook out her scales, wings flaring out to catch the slight breeze before it could escape. It caught her surprisingly hard. With a yelp, she was sent tumbling down the hill and into another prickly patch of undergrowth. As she rolled over and tried to find her footing again, she blinked. _Is that…?_

The gurgle of running water was unmistakable and very close – she scrambled upright and pushed her way through a cluster of low, thick bushes. She groaned out loud at the sight of the silver stream threading through the undergrowth. A deer straightened up from where it had been leaning down to drink, alarmed at the sight of her, and galloped away in fright when she picked her way over to join it. She couldn't bring herself to feel badly about it. Any prey animal would be frightened of a predator, right?

 _Thank the Ancients._ She leaned down and took a long drink, willing herself not to gulp. Her claws flexed pleasurably, sinking into the damp earth.

It was unlike her, she realized when she sat back up and stepped away to survey the small area, to not have thought about something like this when she planned her flight from the Temple. She had been a general for years, marching platoons of ape soldiers through every imaginable terrain as she conquered more and more land. Dante's Freezer had been the most unpleasant, and the most inconvenient – she had been young still, and inexperienced, and it had taken her nearly two weeks to navigate the unruly bunch of apes to the heart of the ice caves without freezing or starving them to death. Regardless of what powers Malefor had granted Gaul, the apes couldn't live on the energy of Spirit Crystals alone like she could.

She had plenty of experience scouting out routes from the air, and in surviving the harshest conditions. But maybe that was all behind her. She had lost her intimidating size and all of her powers – why not her learned skills, as well?

The thought was disheartening, but it was hard to feel anything but peaceful standing beside the shining stream. A cloud passed briefly over the sun, and Cynder eyed the water with growing curiosity – it still shone just as brightly as it had with the sunlight glinting on its surface, unrelentingly silver as though it had absorbed the light of the moons. Her tongue probed around the inside of her mouth, searching for the taste of venom.

"It's beautiful," she said softly to herself. Her voice was already becoming rough with disuse; she struggled not to dwell on what it might sound like weeks or months from now, when she'd finally be able to stop travelling. Maybe.

The stream _was_ beautiful, in an ethereal sort of way that left Cynder feeling unworthy in more than one way. She stared at it for a long time and paced along its muddy banks as she deliberated.

Finally, she took one sharp, confident step into the gentle current. It lapped around her ankle and made a happy babbling noise. Tiny brown minnows parted from their schools and darted around her paw on their way downstream, barely bothered. Nothing else happened, though, except that she was gripped with a powerful, soothing sensation running coolly down the length of her spine.

"Okay…" she murmured, lowering her other front paw into the water and shivering pleasantly. "Not poison. Something else."

Wild magic wasn't completely uncommon. Cynder had spent a good chunk of her life as a general searching out sites with enough of it to power her crystals – Dante's Freezer, Tall Plains, Munition's Forge, among dozens of others that she'd considered and subsequently rejected. She forced her paranoia down with a small, exasperated sigh and padded into the center of the stream, all four of her paws planted in the loose silt.

 _There's nothing weird going on here_ , she told herself sternly. The woods were much friendlier than she'd expected them to be after weeks of nothing but bad news brought to the Temple from afar. _You're just looking for excuses._

Whether that was true or not, she knew that she had to keep moving. There may not be apes here now, but they were bound to be on patrol throughout the Realms now, organizing and preparing. If what Ignitus said was true, they'd especially be on the lookout for herself and Spyro; if she managed to put enough distance between herself and the Temple, maybe they'd forego any attack they had planned in favor of bringing her back to their new headquarters.

With a sense of renewed purpose, she walked with the current down the center of the stream.

* * *

There had always been Spirit Crystals in relative abundance, as far as Cynder could remember. Practically everywhere. They sprung out of earth, ice, and ash without any apparent difficulty, wild and perfectly common, of no use to any other creature until Malefor had let the apes in on the secret to harnessing their power. Concurrent Skies had been perhaps a bit oversaturated, and the Temple as well – there was the entire garden, well-tended again now that the Guardians had returned to their ancestral home to see to them, and a seemingly endless stockpile of shards stored away in chests and dark, forgotten storerooms riddled throughout the many twisting underground corridors; but as a terrifying mutant she had traveled all over these Realms, and she had _never_ gone hungry before.

But she couldn't for the life of her seem to find any in this empty, untouched wood.

"You don't know how lucky you are," she muttered, glowering at a bushy-tailed young squirrel that was stuffing fallen acorns into its cheeks on the forest floor far below her. As she drew up nearer to it, it froze, and without even pausing to stare up at her it abandoned its task and streaked up the nearest tree trunk into the furthest branches.

Cynder knew herself to be a natural hunter, but the thought of swallowing an innocent squirrel _now_ filled her with stomach-quivering revulsion. And it wouldn't help her in the long run, she reasoned. Dragons could sustain themselves on fleshfood for short periods of time, if they stayed close to the earth, grounded themselves… but not indefinitely. She had seen others waste away before her eyes, prisoners denied access to Spirit for months at a time.

Perhaps that meant she was weak or spoiled, as it had only been days since her last feeding. But it was still an unappetizing thought. She shuddered and redoubled her efforts, winging low through the branches and peering semi-desperately through the undergrowth for any little glimmer.

 _I don't think I could do that. Starve._ She thought desolately, guilt dredging up from the depths of her mind again.

Truth be told, she had never known much about dragons aside from the fact that she was one, and so was her Master. Gaul had instructed her with only as much information as he felt was absolutely necessary, which had largely turned out to be… nothing substantial, or even accurate, as far as she could tell from her time recuperating at the Temple.

He'd taught her to read the symbols etched into stone and gold in the cities she laid waste to. He'd taught her to be cruel. He'd taught her to give in to her worst thoughts and impulses, and declare the wreckage in the name of her Master.

He'd taught her that dragons were despicable, that _she_ was the only one of any use – not because she was special but because Malefor had decreed it, and nothing more.

A pulse of acrid anger made her claws flex impatiently into the dirt. She glimpsed her furious reflection in the gleaming water to her left – she looked absolutely terrifying in a way that she'd thought she never could again. The pale markings on her forehead gleamed in the moonlight like they'd been brushed on by some benevolent spirit, pearly and almost beautiful against the dark of her scales, but her eyes glowed green and too-intense in the night and illuminated her face just enough to make it look pointed and deadly again. Her tail was lashing viciously again. (She suspected it was becoming a bad habit, but as she wasn't planning on ever socializing again she couldn't quite motivate herself to try to curb it.) She looked like a smaller version of the deadly mercenary she'd been only several weeks ago, furious and ready to take it out on the next unfortunate being to cross her path.

Abruptly, she could see what the woodland creatures were running from when they saw her coming.

 _Oh._ Her mouth pulled into a forlorn frown. Evidently, her reputation preceded her.

It felt more awful than she'd expected it to. As much as she hated herself every moment she was conscious, and as much as she still dwelt on the things she'd done – forests she'd burned in her senseless rages, creatures that she'd bitten and bled to death to satisfy her Aether-fueled bloodlust – something about being here, vulnerable and alone in the moonlit woods, shook her to the core. Remorse coiled hard and bitter in her grumbling stomach.

The moons watched her balefully, but Cynder shifted her focus to the stars, which twinkled with far less judgement. She gave a quiet sigh as she thought of that night that she'd spent with Spyro in the Temple gardens, surrounded by the stars and the gentle glow of the Crystal clusters.

He'd looked at her with so much raw empathy that she'd almost believed that he could understand the confused thoughts that had whirled through her ravaged mind. Her paws were beginning to hurt – she was unsure how long she'd been walking, only that the night seemed to stretch on unnaturally long and she was beginning to think she'd never see the light again.

The stars were the same but they seemed colder now. Unreachable. Cynder gazed up at them longingly, and heard Ignitus' voice like a ghost whispering into her ear.

_There are legends, going back thousands of years… that the black dragons could travel between realms._

Again, the hideous tainted visions of the Dark Realms returned to the forefront of her mind. Fear rippled through her from snout to tail-tip; but she forced herself to focus, examining them for the first time since she had woken up safe and small again.

At the time she had been too weakened and frightened, she realized, to process any of what she'd seen. Malefor truly was gruesome, warped beyond any redemption, and he didn't seem to know it – or perhaps he didn't care.

The Dark Realms themselves had given her the impression of infinite, cavernous despair, barely contained, full right up to the seams with aimless, poignant hatred seemingly for sport. Fear had asphyxiated her the moment she'd passed through the barrier. There appeared to be no sky and no solid earth to stand on, at least from where she had entered: the open space was black and violet, like some sickening imitation of her hide and Spyro's stripped away from their bones and twisted together into something monstrous. Jagged rips had torn the glistening fabric of reality here and there, revealing slivers of hundreds, thousands, countless other worlds – she could only hope that none of them were as terrible as this one, though the muted unearthly screeching that had emitted from the one nearest her was demoralizing.

Some secondary, subconscious part of her had wanted desperately to prize them the rest of the way open, to slip through just to see… to get lost in the folds of the universe, to escape her Master, escape her own guilt, to learn what lies beyond the Dragon Realms. Malefor's looming crimson-streaked eyes had been the first thing she'd seen, though, and they'd stolen every last infinitesimal scrap of her petrified attention – and even now, just thinking about it, she felt her lungs heave anxiously as though they expected any moment to take a wrong step and stumble back into that horrible place, even though to her knowledge Malefor was no longer confined there.

Now he was probably lurking, winging about Convexity poisoning everything he touched… biding his time. Waiting for Gaul to finish what Cynder had faithfully started.

Her skull was beginning to feel too small once more. A throbbing had started at the base of it again, pounding in time with the pangs of her anxiety, escalating a notch a minute. She wondered again if it was hunger or just fear that wracked her body today.

The starlight no longer filtered through the fog settling bleakly over her thoughts. It had thickened to become a dense, impenetrable mass of bad thoughts and negative energy, sapping the last of her strength. Her body was beginning to feel distressingly weak. There were no Crystals here – no Crystals in this entire forest! She'd chosen the only path with no visible sign that she'd ever be able to survive here – unless the Crystals here were disguised as rocks, and she was just too stupid to figure it out, she _was_ going to starve!

She was bitterly wondering why she hadn't had the presence of mind to ask Ignitus about _types_ of Spirit Crystals, or where they grew, or why – about anything, ANYTHING that might have been useful in a situation like this, where survival was her first priority, _Ancients help her_ she had _no_ common sense, did she? – when the racing of her pulse exploded behind her eyes and the world fell sharply away from around her.

Cynder staggered blindly backward as she recognized the signs of another lapse, lurching towards the ground in the hopes that she could save herself from another nasty fall. She barely felt her head thud against the dirt.

* * *

_The journey to the office at the end of the entrance hall had been a blur._

_She had heard her name on the loudspeaker, been shepherded out of class with the eyes of dozens of others at her back – even as she took small, unsteady steps past peeling lockers and shredded scraps of flyers, she could feel them multiplying. She clenched her scrap of notebook paper into a ball in her fist, forgetting suddenly the obsessive need that had gripped her, the half-finished sketch of two indistinct winged shapes dancing together. They disappeared from her mind and left her alone to face her apparent judgment._

_The whole school could be looking at her for all she knew. She was too scared to look back._

_Her wrists burned. She swore she felt them bleeding, wouldn't dare check._

_Not now. Not here._

_Too many eyes._

_The fluorescent light felt scorching. Sweat beaded along her spine and soaked her temples, weighing down her dirty hair. Had she showered last night? At all this week? She couldn't remember, couldn't think of anything but the algebra homework that needed to be done before fifth period, please won't they just let her go back to class so that she could sink down in her seat and try to work out the problems under the cover of her desk, please, she couldn't afford to fail another class –?_

_This man was frightening. He shouldn't be – she knew that, somewhere in the back of her muddled mind – he_ shouldn't _be scary, didn't mean to be, she shouldn't be scared, so why was she shaking like –_

_"_ _April," he was saying, looming over her in the worst possible way. She thought of the man at home, the looming figure, his waiting fury. Her hands shook. "Your mother called. She asked me to talk to you. April?"_

_His hand closed gently around her shoulder. Her eyes snapped shut as fear coursed through her, blistering her lungs and pouring out through her mouth. She couldn't stop it. She couldn't feel her lips._

_"_ _I'm FINE!" she shrieked, and turned to slam back into the door. She stumbled out through the office, her face hot and wet, her eyes still screwed shut as she desperately staggered out into the hall, towards the main doors, toward freedom._

_But there was no freedom. Nowhere was safe. She was trapped, trapped and terrified – there was someone waiting for her wherever she went, looking at her, judging her. Wanting to know what's wrong. Wanting to punish her. To hurt her._

_She could hurt herself. She'd proven that! The green stone on the back of her ring finger felt too hot and she twisted it anxiously as she fled into the parking lot and disappeared into the sea of student vehicles._

_Why wouldn't everyone just leave her alone?_

* * *

Her first thought was one of extreme annoyance: the loose dirt that had somehow come to coat her snout in her sleep was unbearable.

Cynder sneezed violently, forced to sit up as a cloud of dust spread around her and got into her eyes. She blinked furiously and scrambled backwards. Already, her head was spinning, desperately grabbing for the remnants of the dream that were already slipping back into the dark depths of her unconscious mind. All that she retained was the strange lingering image of her eyes reflected on the back of a small piece of metal.

It was useless, she realized with a sinking feeling. These couldn't be anything like Spyro's prophetic purple dragon dreams… It seemed that she wasn't _meant_ to remember them, no matter how disturbing they were.

_So why am I having them?_

Taking a deep breath, she held it in the center of her chest, counting backwards from ten. She had to reign in her temper. She couldn't afford to be impatient, couldn't allow herself to lose control – she had no idea who might take it from her if she loosened her grip even a little. Malefor, Gaul? Some darker, more sinister creature?

She'd been a tool for too long already. Whatever these dreams were – whoever might be trying to communicate with her, or more likely _distract_ her – Cynder was determined to retain her newfound autonomy to the end.

The morning was, once again, oddly silent. As she lifted herself gingerly from the ground and shook the dirt out from the miniscule scales along her wings, stretching the membranes to their maximum – her wingtips brushed the bark of the nearby trees and frightened her half to death.

Her heart thudded loudly in her ears. She scowled at herself. She could feel her pulse skittering in her throat, all the way down the length of her neck.

_If I'm so terrifying, then why am I the one flinching because of a plant?_

Her sour inner monologue followed her persistently through the day, no matter what she did to ignore it. For hours she followed the silver river – at a distance, because her paws had been soggy from the previous day's trek through the mud and she found the feeling of swollen, mushy skin to be wholly repulsive – with no end in sight, no other creatures to even pretend to converse with, and a pounding headache that was only getting worse, and which was making her increasingly paranoid that this was the beginning of a much more gruesome break in the depths of her mind. Despite her best efforts, she couldn't stop the persistent little thoughts from sneaking in through the cracks she'd imagined there.

 _If Spyro were looking for you_ , they whispered traitorously, _then he would have caught up to you by now…_

But she didn't want Spyro to come looking for her. Or… that's what she'd told him, wasn't it?

_But has that ever stopped him before?_

Cynder scowled up into the foliage, failing spectacularly on focusing on the dull ache of growing hunger rather than continuning this ridiculous conversation with herself. _He's being respectful. He's never been anything but._

_Or maybe he's sick of you. You're tiresome, and he's got more important things to focus on… More worthy dragons to save…_

Her inner demons were writhing victoriously already, and as she fumbled for a rebuttal, she faltered. She'd considered all of these things already, only in varying stages of half-consciousness.

And what if they were right?

_Maybe he's found out about the dreams, they suggested. He knows that you're deranged. You're still broken! You're like a broken pot whose pieces have just been stacked together again. You'll fall back apart at any moment._

A loud crack and a surge of pain forced her back to reality. Her tail was still gesticulating wildly, bleeding slightly from the tender spot where it had made contact with the nearest tree trunk. From the looks of the dented bark, cracked and falling to pieces, she had gotten off lightly.

Reluctantly, Cynder padded over to the muddy shores of the stream and gingerly turned around to dip her tail into the cool, gentle current. She tipped her head back and sighed, silently but with fervor.

 _He understood me, though,_ she thought feebly. She desperately banished the larger-by-the-minute image of Malefor's ghastly lamp-like eyes from her thoughts. She was sure they'd be back. _No one has ever understood me before._

_And no one will again._

Unbeknownst to her, the shadows of the branches overhead twisted inwards to pool around her where she stood.

* * *

Dawn the next morning, Cynder awoke feeling incredibly drained; more than she could even have imagined, these past weeks in which she'd thought she could feel no worse than she already did. Her skull felt tender all around beneath her scales, as if someone were trying to press the sides inward. The sky was a kaleidoscope of hazy colors that she couldn't make sense of for long moments of still-fading terror.

Whether it was the nightmares, another symptom of her insanity, or her own hunger, she didn't really care – she just wanted it to stop.

Cynder silently, futilely berated herself for not even _thinking_ of nourishment when she had concocted this half-witted escape plan of hers. It just hadn't occurred to her that she couldn't run to the other side of the planet without some kind of nourishment. Perhaps she'd expected to just up and die the moment she was clear of the Temple grounds. That certainly would have been easier than this.

Clearly, she was just as naïve as Spyro.

The thought was disproportionately bitter, and it unsettled her enough that she forced herself to sit up. The world tilted oddly for a moment before settling again in seemingly the wrong way; and she found herself faced once more with the prospect of marching aimlessly through an increasingly dark, damp forest with no idea when she'd ever emerge.

With that in mind, it was challenging to force one paw in front of the other. But she did it. The grove was, at least, thick and refreshingly cool. The silver river had widened dramatically last night when she'd finally settled down to sleep (or, rather, collapsed) and she would now have to take a running leap and glide across if she wanted to cross it. The earth remained mossy and richly moist, sticking between her toes and leaving dark debris on the tips of her wings where they brushed the ground beside her, limp.

 _What if this is all for nothing?_ she thought dejectedly. _I can't go back now. I can never see any of them again…_

No. No, that was no way to think – she'd still pose a threat if she rolled over and gave in now. She had to do this, for the dragons that she'd come to care for, for all of the creatures she'd already harmed too much. She narrowed her focus to that one tender, painful thought and pushed onwards, stumbling through the undergrowth. She managed to drag herself perhaps another mile down the length of the river in the next hour, barely awake and unable to comprehend anything but the labored in-out of her breath and the growing ache in the pads of her paws. The water was threaded with luminous purple, almost the same shade as Spyro's eyes, though the possibility that she was hallucinating it lingered at the hazy edges of her mind.

(She didn't mind. It was, as hallucinations went, fairly comforting – the weak, pining part of her fixated on that color like a lifeline.

Things would be so much more bearable if she'd just let Spyro come with her…)

But the exhaustion was tangible and becoming more overwhelming by the minute. There were no animals in sight anymore – they had all begun to give her a wide berth the day before, and by the time she woke this morning the woods were entirely silent. There were no Crystals, no deer… She fixed her eyes desperately on a particularly ancient-looking tree barely visible in the distance. It was rose gold and alluring in the soft glow of the still-rising sun.

 _If I can make it to that tree,_ she decided. _Then I'll stop and rest. Briefly._

It was perhaps a bit too optimistic to expect that she wouldn't just fall asleep again and wake up just as tired and more hopeless by half. She had hardly been awake at all, and already she was swaying with every halting step. Nevertheless, Cynder closed her eyes and forced her legs to move mechanically, feeling the coolness rising off the river to her left.

Her eyes were still closed tightly in concentration when she felt it. The far-off pulse of a Spirit, calling to her – it beckoned her with great, ocean-deep concern, as if the Ancients could feel her desperation and were extending their wings out toward her to pull her closer. But that was ludicrous, and Cynder couldn't breathe for several moments as she struggled to understand why the Ancients would give a damn about _her._ She who had wiped out half her own race. But the feeling didn't lessen – if anything, as she took one more stumbling step forward, it grew exponentially. A sense of overpowering tenderness stole into her chest and spread out through her veins, horribly at odds with her guilty conscience.

The emotional rebound burned at the base of her skull and in the back of her throat, bringing tears to sting at the corners of her eyes.

She refused to examine the intrusive feelings at all, too thoroughly convinced by her own irredeemability, but no matter how hard she tried to ignore it her eyes still snapped open when she felt the heat spreading across her back as the trees receded and gave way to a small, sloping clearing. The sun glared down at her, much higher in the sky. Her eyes found the source of the incessant pull, helplessly admiring the exquisite way that the light glinted off it.

Later, she would think back to this moment, furious with herself and trying to understand how she had let her guard down so thoroughly. She had trained so _hard_. But it was hardly her fault, in the state she was in. The first glimpse of a Crystal in days made her careless, giddy – she raced to it at a gallop, similar to the one she had mocked Spyro for many times.

It wasn't just a Crystal. It was the first bit of hope she'd had in days.

Maybe she _had_ done the right thing. Maybe she could survive on her own for long enough to get away – she would run to the other side of the earth, to another Realm entirely if she had to, following the call of the stars that knew her ancestors, who would know how to help her. How to tuck her away in some secret place where no one else would touch her and be corrupted.

Even if it was all for the sake of dying well and truly alone.

The Crystal, when she first rubbed her flank firmly against it, appeared different from the ones she had grown accustomed to at the Temple gardens. It reminded her of the Crystal beds grown wild around her base at Concurrent Skies (though she loathed to even think about the place she'd festered for so long in isolation): the planes of the center crystal were smooth and untarnished, almost transparent but for a livid green sheen, but stalagmite-like protrusions stuck out at extreme angles from the base of it, making it very difficult to get close to.

It was as if the poison in the river had seeped into the Spirits, as well, but Cynder was undeterred. Poison, she reasoned, had long been her friend.

She stepped neatly over each of the protrusions as she wound her way around one way, then turned and rubbed against it with the opposite flank tentatively. For all she knew, she'd drop dead the next moment – that wasn't the worst thing, was it? – and Spyro would have one less hopeless thing to worry about. One less evil in the world to take on… But the cool energy that seeped soothingly in between and beneath her scales didn't _feel_ toxic, and Cynder wasn't sure that she would have minded if it was. She had been weak for so long now. She couldn't take another day of it.

She hardly registered the sharp rustling in the undergrowth behind her, too busy pressing her face eagerly to the crystal. She could feel magic singing along her spine and to the very tips of her wings, to the ends of her claws which had sunk deep in the soil beneath her in pleasure. She had never been this hungry before, so incapacitated, her nerves were all on fire all at once as they reignited, restored –

"Well, well, well. What have we here?" There was a loud, sloppy bark of laughter behind her and a squawk – _too close._

Alarmed, Cynder spun around in time to jump back away from the merciless thrust of the hulking creature's sword. But it wasn't silver – she screeched and flapped her wings twice, hard, attempting to dodge a second time as the blunt wooden end of the weapon slammed into her chest and left her winded, reeling sideways with her wings still flapping wildly.

Before she could take another gasping breath and try again, she felt the presence of several more assailants approaching her from behind. Her tail lashed instinctively. She wanted to turn and make quick work of the weaklings at her back, but she didn't dare turn away from the leering, slobbering black-and-white furry beast towering over her. That one, she knew, would hit hard.

"Who are you?" she shouted. "Get away! I'm warning you!"

The razor-tip of her tail whipped across the abdomens of what felt like three underfed henchmen, all of them bony yet broad-chested. They were larger than apes but less coordinated, although she was willing to bet that they were just as dangerous to her in her weakened state.

More importantly, though, they were carrying something long and thick between them.

_Rope._

They meant to capture her.

She shuddered and flared her wings again, straining to find an air current that she could use to take off. There were too many creatures here, though, crowding her and blocking the wind from the cliff, and the trees were no help.

"Oh, it's not important who we are. But I know who _you_ are." The creature bent down and jabbed the wooden end of it's sword into her shoulder, expelling a reeking laugh in her face. On one shoulder perched a drab little brown bird, with beady, malicious black eyes, and on the other there was a puce-colored bird of the same type. The puce one clicked it's beak in laughter – with an unpleasant start, she realized that the voice wasn't issuing from the mutt shoving it's snout into hers, but from the bird.

"The Terror of the Skies, wasn't it? Cynder the Black Dragon!" It sounded horribly pretentious, peering curiously at her tiny new form. She did her best not to tremble, still backing minutely away with her tail lashing behind her, keeping the other creatures at bay for the moment. "What an honor!"

"I'm not anymore," she protested, although when she heard it it hardly made sense. Her head was suddenly pounding in the same way it used to when Gaul cracked his whip in her direction. "I'm different now –" She sucked in a sharp breath, unable to stop the rest from tumbling out. "Don't _call_ me that!"

The moment the words left her, she froze. The implications left her breathless.

_Can I really be different?_

The ropes swung over her head in a flash, and she came to her senses just a moment too late to escape – it tightened around her from both sides, pulled taut until her wings were crushed painfully to her sides. A growl ripped from her throat. She threw herself against the pressure without hesitation, panic rising to fill her gut and climb her throat – this wasn't something she had practiced! She hadn't trained for this!

A flash of memory splintered her concentration, throwing her violently backwards in time. _Chains. The manacles around her slim neck and slimmer joints pulled painfully as she strained to flap her wings. They hurt – she was too small, too young._

_She cried out wordlessly, tears brimming in her eyes, but Gaul only raised his whip and laughed._

_"_ _Try harder!" he snarled. "You're useless to your Master if you can't even fly!"_

_The sting of the whip seemed to suck all of the air from her lungs, splitting her open across her back from her right flank to the left side of her neck. She wailed._

_"_ _I can't do it!"_

_"_ _What kind of dragon can't_ fly _?" The whip cracked again, and she felt blood welling up through the torn membrane of her underdeveloped wing. Gaul was grinning sadistically; she had to close her eyes, trembling all over as she tried to focus. "Unless you aren't a dragon at all – in that case, I'm sure that he wouldn't mind if I killed you. Shall I ask him?"_

_She sobbed and beat her wings again, hard and clumsy. Her paws briefly left the ground._

The clearing came back into focus so suddenly that her body jerked with the emotional momentum. She was trembling.

 _Stop it,_ she inwardly berated herself. _Don't let him think you're afraid._

Hardly a moment seemed to have passed since her outburst – she was standing in exactly the same spot, she deduced, and no one else had moved either. But the talkative bird ignored her as if she hadn't spoken at all.

On closer inspection, it didn't even entirely seem to be a bird – its wings were featherless, scaly and thin, not so unlike her own. It had a long, kinked tail with a wild tuft of what appeared to be fur at the end, though she had yet to see it move. It looked broken. Its skin was leathery and dull, and a long, poorly healed scar stretched across its front like a warning. _I'm small, but you'd do well not to assume that I'm helpless_ , it seemed to whisper.

No, it wasn't an ordinary bird. But it certainly wasn't related to a dragon.

"You're quite a bit smaller than I remember you…" It cocked it's head and considered her with a dark glint in its eye that made Cynder's scales flatten. She bared her teeth, wings struggling uselessly against her bonds of their own accord. That, more than anything, seemed to entertain it. "But isn't this delicious! Don't worry – you won't be _too_ much of a disappointment. I'm sure _Arborick_ won't even notice the difference!"

The other bird laughed raucously; there was a smattering of uncertain titters from the crewbeasts surrounding her. It left her wondering if they even understood what their apparent leader was saying, or if they were nothing more than trained pets who recognized a signal when they heard it. She forced herself not to turn and glance at them, tucking away the unfamiliar name for later pondering.

 _No time for pondering now_ , she realized with dismay. She was well and truly trapped.

The bird pecked sharply at its host's neck and the poor beast's eyes watered as it obediently sheathed its sword and reached for the ropes. Her captors gladly gave them up; they were eyeing her nervously, cowed by the crackling magic still faintly swirling around her from her interrupted feeding.

"Come on then, men," the bird commanded with far more swagger than a creature of its diminutive size should have been able to muster. Cynder glowered at it, but it wasn't even looking at her anymore even as it tugged the rope sharply and forced her to stumble in the direction that it had come from, down the hill and toward the distant sea. A rapidly growing sense of renewed helplessness was threatening the edges of her vision.

Wait – she knew this feeling. She stopped dead in her tracks, vision already swimming.

For Ancient's sakes _– not again! Why now?!_

Hopefully they wouldn't just drag her through the undergrowth. She felt herself falling, just as the bird twisted back to look at her smugly again, and caught its eyes narrowing just before she fell unconscious.

* * *

_Numb numb numb. There was nothing left to feel._

_She'd spent fifteen miserable years enduring the screaming, the begging, the sobbing, the bruises. He never relented. She was practically an adult, she could get a job – she could quit school, she was going to end up failing out at this rate anyway. She could LEAVE._

_But her_ mother _wouldn't leave._

_She felt her mouth pull into a deep, quivering grimace as she tripped down another flight of ugly brown carpeted stairs with her purchase in hand._

_Her mother was a fucking idiot._

_She tightened her death grip on the gauze she'd wrapped around her bicep, though the blood was already seeping warm and sticky and too-much between her fingers, and crept past the laundry room and through the door at the end of the poorly lit hall. The garage at the lowest level of the building was always eerie at this hour, all cracked cement and pale, flickering fluorescent lights that maintenance had neglected to change for the past four months despite the complaints. Empty bottles that had once contained cheap liquor and cheaper beer littered the floor on top of dark stains that could be just about anything. The vehicles were, for the most part, not in much better shape than the building itself, and she had no problem tucking herself in between two of them and curling into a ball, blankly facing the metal doors._

_The plastic gallon jug clutched in her other hand was only half full, but it had to be enough. Had to. She swallowed, throat horribly thick and dry, and fumbled one-handed with the cap. Her hands were sweating. It took her an impossibly long time to get it off._

This is the right choice, _she thought without conviction. It was the only choice. Or at least, the only one that had any appeal anymore._

_"_ _Bottoms up," she croaked at the empty space._

_Before the smell could hit her, she tipped it recklessly back and swallowed a foul mouthful._

_It was undoubtedly poison, though that should have been obvious – antifreeze was not a beverage. It was an exit._ Her _exit. But regardless of how committed she'd been seconds ago, her throat was convulsing and her mind was a senseless whirl of panic and terror._

_She choked and gagged, and without thinking threw it forcefully away from her and against the front tire of the car beside her; an alarm blared deafeningly through the garage, bouncing off the concrete and amplifying horribly until she was sure that the whole block could hear it. Her eyes spilled over again, still sore and swollen but unable to stop._

_This wasn't right. This wasn't what she'd imagined. She couldn't stop gasping, clutching at her throat with both hands as she leaned over and gagged, spittle and blue liquid decorating splattering the floor beneath her. The meager contents of her stomach soon followed. Her arm was covered in blood now, the gauze lost somewhere on the ground with nothing to hold it to her gaping wounds. She struggled to remember where she had left the razor responsible – probably on her nightstand, where she had failed to leave a note. She couldn't find the right words to say, but she should have tried, she knew suddenly. The trembling had progressed to full-blown, violent shaking, she couldn't stop, couldn't stop –_

_Her mother wasn't going to leave. She'd just think this was her fault._

_And she'd never, never leave._

_Her vision was blurring and dimming now. Her ring seemed to gleam especially brightly, deep green beneath the spray of blue-tinted vomit on the back of her hands._

Oh God _, she thought miserably,_ I fucked up _._


	4. Part 4: Capture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part is short too, but there's a lot going on here, so pay close attention! Cynder doesn't take to captivity very well. The end of the story is approaching, and a lot of the action will be happening in this part and the next.

The floor was literally rolling beneath her. Cynder woke already nauseated, sinking her claws into the creaking, shifting wood before she was even aware.

It wasn't immediately clear where she had been taken, but the ropes were gone and her wings were free, for which she was immensely relieved. The last thing that she remembered was making unfriendly eye contact with the leering bird-captain before she'd blacked out and resumed her series of frustrating mystical dreams. She wondered uneasily what he'd thought of her lapse.

Had she made any noises in her sleep? Could they even tell that she was dreaming, or did they think that she'd just passed out from exhaustion?

 _Maybe if they think that I'm psychotic they won't have any use for me, and they'll let me go,_ she thought hopelessly. There was every possibility that the beasts that had captured her had handed her right over to the apes, or any one of her numerous enemies – not for the first time, she regretted not trying harder to make some amends, even if it meant pestering the Guardians to escort her from the Temple grounds. Too many creatures had been harmed by her, lived in fear of her…

Regardless, she could only lie there feeling sorry for herself for so long. With what felt like a monumental effort, she steeled herself for the worst and peeled her eyes open, struggling to focus.

The cell they'd shoved her into was small – smaller than the storeroom back at the Temple, though instead of clutter it was full of absolutely nothing but dirt and dust. A fully grown dragon like Ignitus would never fit in such a space, and not for the last time Cynder bitterly missed the feeling of being _big_. There was no furniture to speak of. The walls in front of and behind her were solid planks, aged and scored from what appeared to be years of rowdy prisoners, who Cynder could only assume were about as willing as she was to be here. To her left, the wall was curved and a pitifully small half-round window let in enough daylight to illuminate the scuffed floorboards. To her right was another wall of wood, interrupted by an archway from which a dangerous-looking set of battered wooden bars descended into the floor. It had no visible knob or latch, and no hinges, which made Cynder distinctly uncomfortable. More so than she already was, anyway.

As the floor rocked again beneath her, she caught the sound of waves distantly slapping wood, and she blinked as it occurred to her that she must be on a ship.

Out at sea.

The thought should not have unsettled has as much as it did. She was, after all, a dragon – she could fly whatever distance it was from here to shore if she were pressed, although it might be exhausting, and there was no telling what sort of eyes the Dark Master might have in the sky now that she was no longer patrolling them for him.

It was just… She had never been very fond of water. It wasn't an element that Malefor had gifted her the ability to control, and the times she had been submerged had all been rather… traumatic. The idea of being surrounded by it, cold and wild, was not pleasant. She had no desire to find out if she'd retained her ability to swim.

The ship lurched suddenly, and she scrabbled with her claws on the wooden floor seeking some kind of purchase as she slid suddenly to one side of the little room. She must have made a noise, because moments later she heard heavy footsteps approaching her cell from what couldn't be more than twenty paces to the left. She hunkered down low into herself and listened carefully for any more clues as to what the rest of the ship might look like.

It wasn't surprising to find a slobbering mongrel on the other side of the bars, but it was still unpleasant. Cynder felt her wings rise, still folded, to shield her instinctively, her eyes narrowed into slits. A nervous gleam came to the Skavenger's eye – his clumsy white-furred paw hovered over the locking mechanism uncertainly.

"Yer awake," it said eventually, eyeing her as it might a docile bear: quiet and a just a tad fearful. "Skabb'll want to see yer."

"I don't want to see him unless he's opening this door and talking to me face to face," she hissed, almost surprised at the force of her own anger. She'd been free from her chains for long enough now that she'd gotten a taste for freedom, apparently. "You tell him _that_."

"Skabb doesn't take orders ver'well," it warned. "Ye'd be better off givin'im what he wants 'n not askin' questions." It looked her up and down again, as if confused – she could almost see the question forming on its face. _How can something so small be so terrifying?_ She snorted. It must not have ever seen a dragon before. She spared a single amused thought for what its reaction might have been to her full size, months ago when she was at the peak of her borrowed power.

_Pity. I would have given these ingrates something to be scared of._

Feeling spiteful, Cynder whipped her tail, knowing that it would gleam like steel in the dimness. "Funny… I don't take orders very well, either." She bared her teeth slightly in her own warning. " _Tell him_."

Warily, the pirate backed another step away from her door without ever having touched it. It almost seemed relieved. It was wearing a sweat-stained bandana similar to the one worn by one of the obnoxious little lizard-birds she'd met just before her capture, which only served to make her boil.

"I'll tell'im," it said, and then fled without a backwards glance.

Cynder wondered if she looked as demonic as she had that night in the forest, when her own reflection had startled her away from the water. She hoped so.

There was no way of knowing how soon the captain would deign to visit her again, so Cynder shook the feeling back into her legs as she stood and returned to her mental cataloguing. Again, she wished Spyro were here – this time if only because a second set of eyes and ears would be nice in a situation like this. She scrutinized the planks of the walls, frowning as she realized how many thin lines had been carved into the wood. She didn't understand several of the languages she was certain were present – she had only ever really learned to read and write in dragon and ape pictographs – but there were some that were large and clear with their intent, regardless of the specifics.

One prisoner had carved tally marks into the ceiling somehow – sixteen huge, clean gouges in the wood. Cynder shuddered to imagine what had happened to them.

Straining to hear even the tiniest creak out of the ordinary, she shuffled closer to the wooden bars and slowly stuck her snout through the gap. Her bitter nostalgia about her previous size evaporated to be replaced by gratefulness for her small, narrow face, because she managed to crane her neck and push her head most of the way through and into the hall. With a grimace and a twinge of pain, she managed to rotate it around one way and then the next, quickly taking stock of the long hall that seemed to stretch on forever, curving along the ship's sides.

There were rows of other barred-doors, placed at intervals so that, she guessed, none would be directly facing the others. The forced isolation of it was chilling, if only because it was something that the old her would have delighted in, had she any time or patience to build anything as extensive as this below-deck prison. For the umpteenth time since she'd woken, she wondered how large this ship really was. It appeared to be enormous already – what would she find if she ascended to the layer above this one? Was there more below?

How many other prisoners could there possibly _be?_ She wondered.

The waves lapping against the side of the ship sounded more sinister than ever now. Cynder backed away from the door, wrinkling her nose, and sat back against the wall. The window above her head spilled sunlight weakly onto the floor where she'd just stood, pooling there like bright, false hope. There were gulls crying somewhere far overhead and she felt abrupt jealousy crawl hot into her stomach at the thought that other creatures were flying free, wheeling and soaring without a care when she was trapped down here by a bunch of mangy curs and their sassy little pets.

 _I could eat those things… I bet it would only take two bites,_ she thought petulantly, staring moodily through the wooden slats. She didn't know that it would really nourish her much, but it would be immensely satisfying. And she was nothing if not a hedonist, lately.

_Only one if I was bigger._

She sat, tail curling tightly around her, for several hours before giving up and pacing about the small room again, agitated. Skabb clearly didn't think much of her challenge, if he'd even gotten it – she had her doubts that her messenger had even delivered her message. He'd been wary of her, but it was clear that he feared his brutal, brawny captain more. The sun was starting to dip and the light was disappearing, which told her that soon the endless night would be upon her, and she'd be alone in the dark once again.

She blinked. _Endless…_ She'd forgotten about the lunar alignment in her loneliness, but it must be close now, surely? She could hardly remember how long ago she'd left the Temple. It had felt like half a lifetime, perhaps only because she missed them all so much, and hated herself even more than that… But it couldn't realistically have been more than a few days. A week? The moons had crept nearer and nearer each other these past days, until their edges grazed one another, and Cynder's scales rippled uneasily across her shoulder and down the length of her time with the unsettling realization that she may still be imprisoned when it happened.

Ignitus seemed to think that the night of the eclipse would be the night that evil ran rampant through the Realms.

Would _she_ be running with it?

Cynder swallowed at the ghostly image that that conjured in her head. Even in her thoughts, her eyes gleamed eerily, empty of anything but Malefor's magic.

What was going to happen to her?

* * *

The waves lapped much more quietly against the boat in the nighttime, following the gentle ebb-and-flow of the twin moons each vying for their attention. Cynder listened to it morosely for a while, unable to sleep. She'd spent the remainder of the day alternately frustrated as she waited for the captain to appear, and anxiously anticipating another nightmare that had never come.

Evidently, Skabb had remained unimpressed by her veiled threats – which was reasonable, as he'd bested her once already, but it still rankled her to think that she was nothing but a joke to a creature so massive with so little brainpower. She had been on the ship at least a day, and she'd been visited only once more by a smaller and even more pathetic-looking deckhand whose bandana had been tied loose and incorrectly around their head. They'd thrown chunks of cooked meat through the slats, and Cynder had eaten them with ferocious hunger when they'd left her once more, but flesh had only taken the slightest edge off of her appetite.

She needed nourishment. She hadn't even been allowed to finish feeding on that lonely Crystal in the wood before she'd been forced back into captivity. The Apes, at least, would have understood that much, but it appeared that as fearsome as the Skavengers might be to other races, they had never encountered a real, live dragon before.

If they did know, however, then it was doubly cruel of them to keep her like this. Not that she thought they would care much for her wellbeing once they had gotten what they wanted from her… but it still wasn't clear what exactly that was.

The floorboards in the hall creaked so softly she barely heard them as another wave gently slapped the side of the ship nearest her cell.

The resentment bubbling recklessly up in her felt like poison, so familiar… For once, she allowed herself to take comfort in it. She'd thought before that poison had been her friend, hadn't she? Why should she be afraid of it now? Her gut churned uncomfortably, unused to being full up like this of the flesh of other creatures. She imagined their souls screaming and pawing pitifully at the walls of her stomach.

 _I always did have a morbid imagination…_ She sighed and lifted her head again to stare sightlessly out at the moons.

Earlier there had been some commotion as several Skavengers had bundled what she could only assume to be more unconscious prisoners down the stairs and into a cell, but to her knowledge it was nowhere near hers. They had disappeared down the hall and not returned, with or without the small form she hadn't been able to crane her neck high enough to see. She wondered if there was another exit. There must be – but she had little hope of scouting for it unless she could figure a way out of this cell.

There was another quiet creaking sound from the hall. The floorboards were a lot noisier at night, she thought unhappily. She was really beginning to loathe being on this ship. Seasickness did not even begin to cover it.

Cynder huffed noisily and tucked her snout into her wing, burning with irritation. It was several moments before she recognized the shuffling noise from the hall for what it was and her head shot back up, eyes prying apart the dark to focus on the cautious jut of a pink nose through the lower slats of the door.

"Ah, it _is_ you," the creature said in a familiar cantankerous voice. She froze, recognizing the shape of the Manweersmall before he'd even stepped all the way out into the open. He wore the same hat that he had worn when she'd chained him beneath the volcano with the others. "Cynder… you are nearly as small as I am, now. A nice change!"

"Mole-Yair," she said uneasily, not daring to move so much as the tip of her tail in case he was hostile. She wouldn't blame him – her memories of her days as a terrifying beast were hazy for the most part, but she could clearly remember the shouting _this_ one had given her as she'd personally dragged him by his ankles down to the mines. Her soldiers had wanted nothing to do with him, even armed to the teeth as they were. He had a very colorful vocabulary, for a Manweersmall… Most of them had been quite timid.

But that… might have been her fault. She gazed shamefully at the gouges in the ceiling.

Mole-Yair seemed unperturbed by their reunion. In fact, he seemed pleased to see her. "You'll be needing something to keep up your strength, hm?"

"What?" She refocused her eyes on him, startled. He was thrusting a small, weathered rucksack through the slats, holding it open to reveal a glimmering pile of glowing shards. Cynder was up and rushing forward before she even consciously knew what they were. She thrusted her snout into the bag and inhaled sharply, her chest heaving in a silent sob. The pieces were small and far from the potency she was used to, living at the Temple with its plentiful gardens, but with every breath she took she could feel the well of energy at the deepest, darkest center of her filling up, slow and wonderful.

"Thank you," she gasped after a long moment of frantic rubbing and panting. Mole-Yair said nothing; she could feel him watching her with his beady eyes, measuring her, but she couldn't bring herself to feel naked as she might have yesterday. "Thank you, thank you."

Desperation was not dignified. It felt cleansing, though, and humbling, and some masochistic part of Cynder almost missed the horrible feeling of starvation creeping in on the edges of her sanity. She drew her head back out of the bag eventually, blinking slowly as the world sharpened and righted itself around her. _Ahh… that's right._ She shook out her wings, which had begun to flutter with excitement, and finally looked up bashfully at her deliverer.

With a furtive glance around, Mole-Yair pulled the bag back through the slats carefully and snapped it shut. He lifted the hat from his head and stowed the bag beneath it – looking at him, amazingly, it was impossible to tell that anything had changed, and Cynder had to admire his skill at subterfuge. He finally spoke, leaning his snout through the bars again.

"There, that is better… Tell me," he said, somehow managing to lower his voice even more, until she swore that she could feel it vibrating in the pads of her paws. "How long have they had you here? When did they bring you?"

"I – I don't know." She was still too preoccupied with Mole-Yair's apparent lack of resentment towards her to think clearly. Her head felt cluttered and twisted around. "More than a day ago. Skabb is refusing to see me."

The Manweersmall raised one bushy eyebrow, cracking a grin. "I can't imagine why."

She grimaced and averted her eyes again sheepishly. _It really is my own fault._ "I don't think that he wants to hear what I have to say to him."

"Maybe it is a good thing then that I have not had the opportunity." Cackling, Mole-Yair withdrew his snout, and a thrill of fear at the idea of being left alone again brought tears to her eyes. She blinked them away furiously, though Mole-Yair didn't seem to notice. He was looking grayer around the snout than he had when she'd imprisoned him. She wondered how long the Manweersmalls had been here… hadn't Spyro freed them only just before their confrontation at Concurrent Skies?

"Mole-Yair," she said carefully, drawing nearer to the door despite herself to face him. He twitched his whiskers as though inexplicably pleased by this. "Where are we? Do you know who these – creatures – are?" She struggled to find the correct word to describe them and fell flat.

"You are on the Fellmuth," Mole-Yair said, a note of derision entering his voice. "It is an unreasonably large ship piloted by a brute called Skabb. But don't be fooled – he is a puppet to those filthy little birds that defecate on his shoulders all day long… If you want to take him down, I would eat those two first. I am sure that the bad taste that they would leave in your mouth would be worth it."

Cynder pulled a face, "I'll keep that in mind."

 _Where did you get those shards?_ She wanted to ask, but she wasn't sure where the boundaries between them might lie, or if that would be overstepping them somehow.

"There have been whispers from the other prisoners," Mole-Yair told her conspiratorially. "They say you are a spy sent to free us by the elder dragons." He scoffed, not unkindly. "I knew that the black dragon would never allow herself to be captured on purpose. You look like you have been trampled by a herd of stinking apes."

She had nothing to look at to judge whether or not this was true. But she didn't doubt it. She was only beginning to feel better, having been forced to rest, and the energy she'd taken from the Crystals likely wasn't going to be enough to improve her bedraggled appearance. "I haven't been well lately." She couldn't stop the next words from slipping out like a sigh. "That's why I was traveling alone."

Unexpectedly, she felt a small, gnarled paw patting her shoulder, and looked up into Mole-Yair's wrinkled little face feeling smaller than she ever had. He was looking at her with so much unfettered sympathy that even the wariness of his posture couldn't make her feel badly about herself, and she wanted suddenly to let loose and just cry as she'd been stubbornly determined not to for days now. The question aching in the back of her throat couldn't be contained a moment longer.

"Why are you telling me this?" she blurted, her voice quiet and raw, almost lost to the slosh-slosh of the water. "Why don't you hate me? I've done – I did horrible things, and you…" She drew a ragged breath, heart racing anxiously. Mole-Yair only shrugged.

"The word is that Spyro is your friend," he said simply. "The wurms that lived near to your fortress spread the tale of your return to these realms at his side. They say that you were possessed." He eyed her shrewdly then, and she froze, trying not to shrink away. Whatever he had been looking for, he appeared satisfied, nodding roughly. "Any friend of Spyro's is a friend of the Manweersmalls. Black dragon or non."

She let out a breath that she hadn't even realized she was holding, and the tears came with it. Headbutting his small hand, she stepped away to allow him to draw it back through the bars. Mole-Yair looked distinctly uncomfortable but he didn't move, still peering at her intensely. "Thank you," she said again, thickly. "For the Crystals, and… the information. If I get out of here," she vowed, her voice gaining strength as the idea spread its roots in her mind. "I won't leave until I free you. And your people."

The Manweersmall curled his lip up in what she could only assume was meant to be a happy expression. "I will hold you to that. Now _sleep_ , or you will be tired for your first battle."

Before she could ask him what he meant by that, he had slipped away down the hall with quick, pattering little footsteps like wind. Cynder let out a gust of a sigh and slumped back to the floor where she had been attempting to sleep earlier, knowing she would probably have just as little success now. There was so much to process. So many plans to consider. She closed her eyes wearily.

The Manweersmalls were on her side. She was _forgiven_. It settled oddly under her skin, like an ill-fitting blanket, leaving parts of her still cold with doubt and guilt. She wasn't sure that she deserved forgiveness – she hadn't been _possessed_ , as Mole-Yair had suggested, and in comparison to the death and destruction she'd personally caused, the things she had been through at the hands of Gaul and her Master seemed like pitiful excuses. Practically nothing, in comparison…

She thought hard about Mole-Yair's expression when he had spoken the words, but she still couldn't sense any trace of lingering anger in them. Even this paranoid creature had given her his faith. Just like Spyro… just like all of the Guardians.

They believed that she was good. That she could be just as brave and bright as Spyro was.

The thought of Spyro stopped her short. It ached.

 _Stop thinking about him,_ she told herself sharply, but the ache only intensified.

For the first time, she considered that maybe the last creature to forgive her would be herself.

* * *

It had been, as best she could tell, two entire days since her capture when the wary crewmen came to let her out of her prison.

They didn't try to drag her by the rope this time, which Cynder was glad for. She was tired. The energy she'd managed to draw out of the Crystal shards that Mole-Yair had smuggled to her cell was meager, and she had been kept cooped up for too long – her muscles were complaining loudly. She was vaguely curious who she would be facing, as the Skavengers hadn't breathed another word about the Arborick fellow that they'd referenced threateningly at her when she'd been captured.

 _Maybe he escaped?_ She thought. _Or maybe he was too big to keep in the cells, and they had to leave him back on shore._

_Lucky him._

In the split-second before she was shoved around the corner and toward door that was already starting to lift open to reveal the arena, Cynder wondered exactly how large this ship was. The arena was twice as large as she'd imagined it when she'd first heard… She nearly missed her introduction, she was so preoccupied.

"… the former queen of conquer herself!" the detestable little purple bird was crowing, and the slobbering crowds of mongrels in the stands were eating up every syllable. "Cynder!"

She felt dirtied for even participating in this; but she was confident that, whoever she ended up facing, she was in no real danger. She watched the sliver of blue sky between the masts above the packed stands grow larger with each passing second, forgetting to care who she was facing at all.

 _It doesn't matter. I'm way overqualified for this_ , she reassured herself, and took a deep breath in order to clear her muddled mind and square her aching shoulders. _Now that I've seen the sky again I can think of a way to get out of here. Maybe I can even leave right now, if I'm fast._

The door was wide open now, and she stalked out into the arena of her own accord, taking a small amount of smug pride in the fact that she hadn't given them the chance they probably wanted to prod her around some more.

And then she was face to face with Spyro.

His eyes were wide in alarm and something resembling fear. Cynder felt a pang dangerously close to her heart, that the sight of her could inspire that sort of thing in him anymore. Before she could dwell on it for too long she began to circle him, as she would any opponent, and despite himself Spyro responded in kind.

She lowered her head and narrowed her eyes at him. This would have to be a good show – all of her escape plans had been effectively destroyed, now. She couldn't very well leave Spyro with these animals! _Don't they know that he has more important things to be doing?_

"Just like old times, huh, Spyro?" she said loudly for effect. The burning anger that had lit in her chest was fanned by the excited mutters and hoots of the audience, but it would work to her advantage to play the crowd and she knew it. It didn't appear that Spyro did, though, because he was eyeing her with a fearful sort of dismay, appearing to swallow something down – perhaps his pride, though she doubted it – before he responded.

"Cynder, I'm not going to fight you," he said lowly. The look in his eyes dared her to contradict him. She felt a strange flush beneath the scales around her throat and had to remind herself to focus, focus – there would be time to moon over Spyro later.

She reigned in an annoyed huff, barely. _Why does he have to be so noble all the time?_ "Relax," she whispered, flaring her wings out threateningly – partly for show, and partly to conceal her words from the onlookers. "I'm just trying to put on a show for the crowd while we try to figure out what to do."

In her opinion, that really should have been obvious. Sometimes Spyro really was such an oblivious country bumpkin.

"Don't trust her," Sparx urged him frantically, hiding behind Spyro's head as he stared at her with loathing. "She wants to eat me!"

She bit back a snarl – _for Ancients sakes,_ _is now really the time, you daft insect?_ – when Spyro's eyes shot up to the sky over her head, and almost simultaneously an explosion sounded to her right, ripping the boards right out of the floor. Cynder threw herself sideways, gasping for breath as the air filled with wood chips and thick, choking dust. She heard the telltale screech of Dreadwings and cursed under her breath.

"W-what's happening?" she heard Spyro spit out between his teeth, coughing. He was too far away – she had to get to him, make sure that if one of them escaped, it was him. Her muscles were suddenly taut and alive with adrenaline – the achiness from earlier had vanished, as had her fear, as if it had all absorbed into the center of her. She felt, briefly, powerful.

"I want out!" Sparx was howling, and then suddenly his screeches turned several octaves more panicked. "I WANT IN!" He was racing in her direction, getting louder – which meant that whatever was chasing him was getting closer too, and fast. The blood was so loud in her ears now that she could hardly hear the fray, lashing her tail expectantly as she braced herself for the fight to come to her.

 _I'll gladly take a chunk out of one of those creepy flying rats_ , she thought to herself darkly. Her claws sank viciously into the wood beneath her paws in anticipation.

Her wings beat furiously, trying to clear the air in front of her, scanning the arena. The Skavengers had all but disappeared in the chaos, yelling and creating a general ruckus as they trampled over each other in the stands, brandishing their swords and daggers, trying to get down below the deck – or maybe they wanted a piece of the action. Whatever it was, they were failing at it, and the Captain was nowhere to be seen. She was distracted searching for Spyro, when she felt too-late the weight of the wind on her back as a Dreadwing swooped down to grab her by the back of her neck with its gaping razor-filled mouth.

Pain burst along her neck in a thousand tiny punctures. She screamed, writhing violently away and feeling her scales tear away from the wounds like tiny droplets, blood welling up to fill the creature's stinking mouth.

"Get away from me!" she screamed. Her wings were flailing, the wind beneath them gone, betraying her. She realized suddenly that there was no way that she could escape now on her own – if this thing had orders to kill her, then it would, and that would be the end. It was twice her size and probably much better fed than she had been this past week and some. Though she was terrified of holding him back from his own escape, she had no choice but to call out to Spyro. "Help!"

No sooner had the word left her mouth than she felt her claws being ripped free of the wood as the Dreadwing snorted and launched itself back into the air, leaving her dangling from its jaws like a helpless kitten. No matter how hard she struggled, she couldn't find a good enough grip on the air to twist herself away and break free. Beneath her, smoke began to billow from the ship's innards – there had been gunpowder along with the cannonballs, she realized with horror. _The ship was on fire._

And Spyro was still on it.

"Spyro!" she gasped, thrashing her wing against the Dreadwing's flank, only to squeal with pain when her bare scales smashed into iron spikes. _Armored. Of course._

"Cynder!" Spyro cried out, but his voice was fading into nothing as the sound of the waves, the wind, and the Dreadwings powerful wing strokes deafened her.

All around her were more of the shrill, foul flying beasts – a whole flock, she realized uneasily, all of them fully armored and several of them mounted by ape soldiers that she refused to focus on, in case she recognized them. Clearly, her abduction had been a top priority. They'd hardly paid any attention to Spyro at all, despite the rumors that Gaul had placed a bounty on the purple dragon. For some reason – and she could think of several very unpleasant ones right off the top of her head – Cynder had been their number one target

She fought and twisted until she was completely spent, but it was no use. The sea seemed endless beneath her. The sound of the water filled her with anxiety. She couldn't fall – she couldn't fathom touching it, couldn't fathom trying to swim right now, like this – and so she stopped struggling and went limp.

The bright disc of the sun was still high in the sky, but she was already exhausted.

Would she dream again? she wondered. Against her better judgement, she had begun to look forward to the dreams in a grudging way – she wanted to know what they meant, who she became once she entered that other strange realm where there seemed to be no dragons to speak of, but apparently just as much suffering as

There was little to be done but to wait. She felt her consciousness slip away from her while her scales grew hot and dry in the salty ocean air.

* * *

_She gingerly held her hair to the side and away from her back, twisting to look at the throbbing red skin and the bold black lines of her first tattoo._

_"_ _It's huge!" Lynn gasped, clutching dramatically at her heart. April's eyes flickered back and towards her cleavage on cue; she looked quickly back between her own shoulder blades in the mirror, heat climbing up the back of her neck and into her cheeks slowly._

Focus on the tattoo, dumbass _, she thought to herself desperately._ You're supposed to be the excited one.

_This was the last thing she could afford to splurge on before she had to start saving. Fast food may not have been glamorous, but the idea of fleeing – of never having to come home to that horrible cramped apartment full of the years-long stale scent of terror and resentment again – that was worth any amount of grease in her hair and under her nails._

_She'd do anything._ Anything.

_It had come out exactly as she'd imagined it… exactly as she'd drawn it, several weeks ago in the middle of the night, in the midst of a terrible, beautiful nightmare. She'd woken sweating and struggling for breath, twisted up hopelessly in the sheets as though they were trying to strangle her, arms pinned tightly to her sides. But she hadn't had the time to panic, because a startlingly clear, shimmering image was pinned in the center of her mind like a prophecy and she could think of nothing else but getting it on paper before it disappeared._

_She'd torn herself free and seized the pen from her nightstand, along with an abandoned English notebook from her bookbag lying open on the floor, and put down line after sharp, perfect line until the image stared back at her exactly as she'd seen it in her dreams._

_It was a crystal – an enormous, beautiful, jagged thing that seemed to burst from the ground. The planes were uneven and glassy-smooth, tapering off from the center to severe points in every direction. Somehow, although she'd never had much of an artistic flair, she'd managed to draw it with every minute detail intact; and her tattoo artist (a friend of a friend who wouldn't ask her for an ID) had transferred it exactly at the top of her back, just creeping up the base of the back of her neck._

_It was gorgeous. It hurt like a bitch._

_She had_ no fucking idea _what it was supposed to be._

_She had no idea why it was on her now, permanently, but it gave her a penetrating bone-deep sense of rightness when she looked at it._

_Safe, sweet, flat-chested Rina nudged her in the ribs with a bony elbow, giving her a little grin. She was small and dark-haired, and perfectly ordinary in that April had known her since she was a nasty little she-devil on the playground at recess, and it was practically impossible to conceive of her in any way other than utterly platonic. She prayed that her friend hadn't noticed her wayward gaze. It was nothing – it wasn't important – she wouldn't want anyone to think…_

_She didn't want the way anyone looked at her to change._

_"_ _Soooooo, what color are you gonna make it?" Rina asked slyly, fingers hovering over the still-bleeding lines almost reverently. Lynn huddled in closer as well, grinning and gasping._

_"_ _Ohhhhh, make it purple!" she squealed, clutching both of their arms._

_"_ _No," she heard herself say, although 'purple' sent a pleasurable vibration down her spine for some reason. She raised her gaze to meet her own pale, tired eyes in the glass. Her lips quirked up in her reflection, though she could have sworn she hadn't moved a muscle. Maybe she was just going fucking insane. That would make a lot of sense._

_"_ _It's going to be green."_

_Her reflection winked._

* * *

Cynder had hoped never to wake to the musky stench of ape footsoldiers' sweaty fur in close proximity ever again. She spent a few moments upon regaining consciousness just lying very still, feeling excessively drained despite the fact that she had clearly been sleeping at least half the day, if the lack of light behind her eyelids was any indication. Her head hurt; her wings hurt; the strong muscles of her thighs hurt. She couldn't recall doing anything deserving of this kind of exhaustion – she could hardly even remember losing consciousness.

She sat up suddenly, sick at the thought. How much time had she lost?

Her mind was flooded with an influx of unwanted possibilities – what they might have done to her while she was incapacitated, what _she_ might have done. Flashes of blood and gore, scenes she'd seen before, the phantom taste of fur and marrow between her teeth. She had to hold her breath for a long few minutes in order to keep herself from gagging.

Was this it, then? Was it exactly what she feared – was she going to become the monster she'd been before, all over again?

She forced herself to drag herself to her feet, wings flapping restlessly to help her balance. There was a horrible familiar weight of clanking metal surrounding her neck.

It was infinitely worse than the days of imprisonment she'd endured already, to think that Gaul held her lead once again. The ape who actually held her chains was significantly less threatening, and probably less competent too – _if I time it right maybe I could loop around and…_ – but her contemplation was cut short as he turned back to face her and leered, beady eyes bright and mean.

"Good, you are awake… The King will want you conscious," he said approvingly. His fist tightened around the chains tauntingly, as if daring her to try and break free. He rose from the blackened tree stump that he'd been resting on. "You were slowing us down, traitor. Get up."

He yanked her chains like he was cracking a whip. Cynder winced as they bruised her already tender windpipe and scrambled to her feet, glowering at him. It was unsettling how unaffected he was by it – _have they already forgotten?_ The other apes were milling about in their heavy clanking armor, unperturbed by the burning of her slitted green eyes on the backs of their necks. Once upon a time they would have thrown themselves at her feet the moment that they saw her, awake and furious, begging for mercy.

_They used to be terrified of me._

Abruptly, she was disturbed by the curl of bitter disappointment she felt in her gut. She didn't… no. No. She didn't _want_ to be that dragon anymore.

The Mountain was looming dark and ominous and far too close ahead of them. It was less than a day's march through the woods; and there, waiting for her undoubtedly with that terrible staff in hand, would be Gaul. Cynder shuddered.

"Get up! Get moving!" The ape that had spoken to her roared, shaking her chains for effect. The soldiers hastily gathered their scraps of food and sprang back onto their restless mounts, moving into formation and beginning their march anew. The Dreadwings screeched happily at the prospect of getting to stretch their limbs again, throwing their heads and slobbering onto the blackened earth. Their saliva was corrosive, she remembered suddenly, which explained why the places that they'd bitten her hurt so damn much; as she was tugged along, she kept her eyes on the ground and stepped carefully over the shallow pits they left in their wake. With a sinking heart, Cynder realized that she was at the center of the horde.

There was nowhere else to go. There were swarms of other dark beasts – in the distance and all around them, she could feel them like a sickening, throbbing heartbeat uncomfortably close to her own, drowning it out – all heading in the same direction.

She thought about Spyro. In the panic and confusion of their scuffle earlier, and the fire, she hadn't had time to wonder how they had ended up in the arena at the same time – or even on the same ship. He had to have been captured… At first she had thought that he'd followed her, but the captain had spoken about him with the same smugness he'd regarded her with, as though he had bested him, captured him – forced him to fight like an animal.

He'd been battered already, she realized belatedly. His scales had been dirt-covered and he'd been limping slightly. How many opponents had he been forced to face before Cynder? Was he badly injured? In fact, he'd looked exhausted. She fought down the anxious thoughts, the possibilities. There had been plenty of other prisoners on the ship, many of them gruesome and dangerous, according to Mole-Yair when he'd visited her briefly again. The vibrant brightness of Spyro's eyes that she'd admired must have been adrenaline. She felt her scales flush.

_Did I really assume that he looked like that because of me?_

Maybe he hadn't been looking for her at all. He had more important things to do than follow her wretched hide to the ends of the earth. Trying to redeem the unredeemable.

She stumbled and her captor twisted back to look at her scornfully. He alone was travelling on foot – she could only guess that he was trying to prevent her chains from being tangled or tampered with. She closed her eyes and took a calming breath as the black anger surged from the thorny back part of her mind, jealousy followed close behind. _If I were half as powerful as Spyro, I could incinerate this bastard._

Some 'midnight dragon' she was.

"Pick up the pace, runt!" He took one look at her face and cackled, fingering the chains in his hands lovingly. "I'm sure Gaul wouldn't mind if I strangled you… He knows how much you like to backtalk your handlers."

The apes nearest them tittered. A flash of sudden years-old panic made her face numb. Cynder froze, the sound of the chains clanking filling her ears and taking her back; visions of Gaul's face looming maniacally over her as she struggled to breathe superimposed over reality, the phantom pressure of his claws digging deep into her exposed throat making her throat spasm. Back then, the gaping hole where his left eye used to be had still been unfilled and sickening to look at, reeking like rotting garbage. She'd gagged the moment she'd been able to breathe again, revulsion crawling through her innards like poison.

Her captor bared his teeth and gave a harder tug, eyes narrowing. "I said _faster._ "

There was no choice to make. Simmering, she put her head down and marched.


	5. Part 5: The Well of Souls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is the last of it - the first arc of this story concludes at the end of this chapter. The next arc will begin in another universe entirely, but never fear, Cynder's story isn't over. If you remember the ending of Eternal Night then none of this should be surprising to you at all. It did kind of give me heart palpitations to write it, though.

The march took longer than she had originally thought, but it still felt far too short. They did not stop to rest, not even for a drink of water, and Cynder was well and truly exhausted by the time she stumbled through the last tunnel and out into a huge, open chamber.

As she had anticipated, Gaul was waiting for her, lounging atop a pile of bones – both whole and brutally snapped – as though it were a throne. A green light shot up high on the wall behind him, tapering to a wide point toward the ceiling – toward the top of the mountain, where the Celestial moons would soon align. The stink of rotting flesh in the air strongly suggested that many of the bones had not been picked clean before being utilized as furniture. Cynder clamped her mouth shut hard and tried not to breathe as she was prodded roughly toward the center of the room, facing the raised dais where the Ape King now presided over his court.

It wasn't just the scent of death or the sickly green glow emitting from the crystals in the walls and the floor that made this room nearly unbearable to be in. It wasn't even the huge carved statue of what could only be a young and handsome Malefor that loomed over them all like an insidious mockery of the ancient statue at the Temple. Cynder realized belatedly as she was ushered to her sentence that a growing sense of unearthly dread had taken hold of her very soul the moment she'd set foot inside the mountain. This place wasn't just a place for corrupted creatures to live the rest of their days, quietly isolated away from the Realms: this place was death personified. There was a deep chill in the air, and her paws stung slightly where they touched the bare stone, which felt icy despite the late summer humidity that she had only just left.

Everywhere throughout the narrow, twisting tunnels she had felt as though she were being watched by the statue's enormous set of glowing eyes, whose malice made her want to cower against the ground like a pathetic little rabbit. Her eyes were still a bit too wide. She forced herself to blink – several times… and then had to force herself to stop again.

_Don't let him know you're afraid._

That strange ache that had been plaguing her for days began again in the membrane of her wings and behind her eyes. Gaul leered at her, his cracked lips spreading wide across his face and twisting it obscenely.

He lifted his arms as if to welcome her, apparently effortlessly, but to her it looked as if he might fall over dead any moment. He was gaunter than ever – practically wasting away, his fur matted and reeking of blood and less pleasant things, and he was oblivious. She suppressed a shudder.

"So… the traitor returns!" he proclaimed, his voice so gravelly that it was hardly recognizable.

She shook her head as if that would clear it of all of the unwanted memories surging painful and renewed to the front of her mind. It didn't help – and when she did manage to shift her focus off of her gory past, it landed solidly on Spyro, who was sure to be looking for her now. She knew him too well. She was dizzy with fear at the thought of him appearing here, like some misguided knight looking to save a damsel; with effort, she kept her footing and raised her eyes daringly to meet the King's.

"You can't go through with this, Gaul!" she called. Her throat throbbed painfully as it expanded against the manacle. She dug her claws into the stone as he regarded her with amusement.

_If I weren't in chains right now_ , she thought savagely, _I'd rip you apart until you looked just like another piece of the pile._

It made her feel the tiniest bit better.

He laughed, a horrible deep sound that reminded her of a terminal illness. It sounded as if whatever Malefor had infected him with had reached his lungs, and it was only a matter of time until it filled them up with black bile and killed him. Cynder relished the thought. But instead of choking on his words and miraculously falling dead – an image that she was fast warming up to – he sat up to peer at her, tilting his head. "Nothing can prevent this. We are merely here to welcome our Master back into the realm and join him at his side."

He pounded one gnarled fist against the piece of what Cynder guessed had once been a very large femur. It made a sick hollow noise.

"But fear not, Cynder," he added mockingly, apparently reading the rising fear in her eyes. She bared her fangs and lunged at him, only to be pulled sharply back at the neck by the unforgiving iron, choking and falling back against the stone. She hissed soundlessly at her captor, but the ape didn't even spare her a contemptuous glance. "You've been such a faithful servant – I'm sure he'll take you back."

"And if not…" he continued, clearly relishing every moment of the outrage on her face. He finally lifted himself from the horrid pile and loomed menacingly over her. His guards huddled closer to the dais, eyeing her suspiciously. They, too, looked emaciated beneath the heavy iron of what she knew to be their best armor. "You will have the honor of being the first to perish by his hand!"

Another spasm of fear shuddered through her. The tone of his voice was revoltingly passionate, as though he really believed every word – as if it were truly an honor to be murdered by a twisted Dark beast that could hardly even be called a dragon anymore, if what she had seen in the Dark Realms was really him. There was another, almost proud undertone to Gaul's rumbling voice, too, which only served to further nauseate her. In some perverse way, she knew, the Ape King had come to consider her in recent times as a sort of daughter, his personal project come to a glorious fruition.

He'd taken his time wandering to the front of the dais, gazing out unseeing with his luminous green crystal eye over the wide, curved room as if he were speaking to a full audience. Cynder swallowed down bile as she realized that this might be what was in store for her – Gaul, clearly, was in the very late stages, but who knew how long she had left before she really began to lose her grip on the reality of what surrounded her?

How long until she began to make choices she couldn't remember making? How long until she lost herself entirely – would it eat her away, as it was obviously doing to the Apes one by one, and leave her an empty husk to be ordered about? Or would Malefor want a more useful, more deadly soldier once again?

It didn't seem likely that he'd spare her sanity. She doubted that he had spared his own.

"Long have we waited!" Gaul bellowed, forcefully shattering her anxious reverie. He raised his armor-backed fists high in the air and shook them. "Long have we _suffered_! But soon, our Master will return, and his coming shall bring forth a new age of power for the Apes – and we shall have our revenge!"

Behind her, she felt before she saw a beam of blinding violet light connect thinly to the center of the worn, intricate stonework of the floor. The apes all beat their chest and screeched in agreement, and Gaul's ghastly laugh echoed a thousand times through the chamber and down the various tunnels that lead through the mountain, drawing the ghostly voices of deceased dark creatures out from the walls. Cynder shrank away. She allowed her captor to tug her unsympathetically outside of the circle of strange symbols, and as he wrapped her chains around and around an iron post jutting from beside Gaul's mound of bones, she managed to drag herself slightly further away from the apes and sat half-hidden behind a pillar, her mind heavy with what was to come.

Gaul was probably right. Even if Spyro came for her – and damn him if he did, but she knew him too well to believe that he'd abandon his pursuit of her now that he'd seen her captured right in front of him – he might be too late. And if he wasn't, then he might as well be captured, too. Gaul was deluded and corrupted beyond helping but he was terribly intelligent. He had not been taught by Malefor himself for nothing. He had years more experience with dragon magic than Spyro did, and battle in general; if it came down to a head-on battle, Cynder could hardly even imagine what would be left of him.

"No," she whispered to herself, watching Gaul order about his soldiers lazily from his resumed perch on his throne. _I won't let him. I WON'T._

_If he tries to kill Spyro –_ her heart missed a beat at the thought, and she closed her eyes grimly, burning – _I'll tear his heart right out of his worthless chest._

There was something black and ugly beginning to boil somewhere deep and untouched inside of her, deeper than every impulse she'd suppressed thus far, something that terrified her… But at the same time, it was terribly comforting. More and more these past few days she could feel a gathering power in the air around her, between her toes and in the beds of her claws. The shadows behind the pillar seemed to wrap around her like seaweed, alive and whispering unintelligible words of comfort, of promise.

At least she wasn't as defenseless as she'd thought she would be.

* * *

_His hands were still just as huge and inescapable as they'd been when she was a young child huddled in the closet. He closed them around her wrists and squeezed, viciously baring his teeth at her and laughing shortly. "Where do you think you're going?"_

_"_ _I'm leaving," she told him. She felt it ring true in her bones. "I'm eighteen, get out of my fucking way."_

_"_ _You aren't going anywhere, miss eighteen." His voice dropped an octave and his fingers curled more tightly, cutting off the circulation entirely. "I still claim you on my taxes, I still own you. Sit your snotty little ass back down." She felt her nostrils flare._

_"_ _Get your hands off of me."_

_The waver in her voice hardly even registered. She felt too-awake and alive in places she'd never even considered – she could feel the nerves beneath her fingernails, underneath her ring which fit now over her pinky finger, and behind her ears, at the corners of her eyes, at the nape of her neck and at the creases of her elbows. She could especially feel them beneath the crushing pressure of his calloused fingers._

_"_ _That's no way to talk to your father," he snapped, and gave her a shake._

_"_ _What are you doing?"_

_The sound of her mother's voice made her blood run cold. She pulled desperately, trying to break free – escape – her mother wasn't supposed to be here. She wasn't supposed to see this. He wasn't supposed to have the option of hurting her all because of April, because of how she'd pissed him off –_

_Her mother looked tiny in his shadow, but defiant, her eyes locking onto her daughter's pale wrists and then on her husband's face. Her expression morphed to be menacing, eyebrows pulled sharply together and curly hair a mane around her face, bristling like a lion. April swallowed hard and breathed, "No, mom, get out."_

_"_ _Don't you touch her," she snapped, voice turning upward sudden and shrill. All that April could think of was the drab hotel room she had dreamed up, her suitcase sprawled open on the neat, thin carpet and the light streaming in through the curtains like freedom. The image seemed to be shrinking away, impossibly further. Unreachable._

_"_ _I'll touch her if I want to. I'm keeping our kid in line," he laughed, the sound of it harsh and sinister. "Don't worry about it, sweetheart – it's under control."_

_"_ _I'm calling the police!"_

_She shook her head wildly, fiery hair flying. "Mom, stop –!"_

_One of those huge calloused hands spread wide and smacked her across the face. Her teeth mashed painfully into her lip and blood began to seep out of the corners of her mouth._

* * *

The lapse took her entirely off guard – she hadn't even realized that she'd fallen asleep, or maybe she hadn't. Maybe she'd been awake the entire time.

As usual, the details slipped away from her almost immediately and left her with just a deep, uneasy feeling growing larger in the center of her where she imagined her innate power might originate, if she had any. That she was this close to death and still no closer to finding out what any of it meant upset her and made it very difficult to stay still. What distressed her most of all, however, was that she hadn't meant to fall asleep. It was imperative that she stay alert until the threat had passed – until she was sure that Spyro wasn't coming.

_Ancients, please don't let him come_ , she prayed hopelessly.

Cynder fretted well into the night. Her hypervigilance was beginning to wear on her already – she was appalled at her own lack of endurance, but thus far since the first lapse she had managed to keep her eyes open… Mostly because every time she began to drift, one of the apes would make some disturbing noise, or the mountain would begin to moan ominously, and she'd be wide awake again and staring into the green light that was steadily creeping up the rocky walls like arteries. If Spyro did arrive, she intended to be the first to know. She would keep an eye on the sky, and all of the tunnels – every possible entrance that he might come jaunting through. She had her orders already, to attack him on sight, but she intended to warn him off if she could before Gaul could ever lay a hand on him. It was the only way he'd live to fight another day.

In the end, though, Spyro's cautious arrival late that night was announced to her by Gaul's sudden cackling.

"The purple whelpling!" he goaded, gesturing broadly with his gnarled hands again. Cynder's head jerked painfully around as Spyro came into view, approaching with his head down and his wings raised threateningly. He looked so small in the huge, empty chamber, facing the humongous skeletal heap of dirty fur that was Gaul. Her stomach twisted.

"It's fitting that you should be here tonight… as we bear witness to the dawn of a new age." He paused for effect, one corner of his mouth turning up slyly. "And the failure of your pathetic race of dragons."

"I wouldn't miss it, Gaul." His voice was colder than she had ever heard it. From her hiding place behind the pillar (where her rump was, admittedly, growing numb from hours of sitting perfectly still and silent) Cynder could practically see the snort of fire in the back of Spyro's throat. The power of the elements that he'd lost had clearly been replenished while they'd been apart, and he looked like he was bursting with it. He narrowed his eyes up at Gaul fearlessly. She felt her throat close up in terror that felt strangely like a building wave behind her skull.

"Then please… have a seat." Gaul stood suddenly from his seat, faster than Cynder had honestly thought him capable, and alarm shot through her as he whipped out that dreaded staff – _pain, it hurt so much, she had to try harder, she couldn't do it, she HAD to do it or the pain would never end, she was so small, her wings, too small, too small to hold her, tearing, pain –_ a beam of cloying green energy shot from the pulsating crystal at the end of it, pulling Spyro violently to the ground. Gaul's laughter turned cruel.

"Foolish dragon… you are no match."

Spyro shook the magic off like water, standing with some effort and glaring up at Gaul again. There was a tiredness to his eyes still, but Cynder knew that it meant nothing – he wasn't leaving. He was determined. "I've gotten this far, haven't I?" he asked quietly.

"Yes. You have been quite elusive," Gaul admitted plaintively. He examined the purple dragon before him with sharp curiosity and raised the staff again, advancing with it brandished threateningly. Cynder wondered with bated breath if he was searching for something of his twisted Master in Spyro, and had to choke down a scoff. There was nothing of Malefor in Spyro. Not even the color of his scales – her Master's scales had taken on an ugly dark and reddening hue many years ago, and in the Dark Realms he had looked even more warped by his own mad pursuit of power.

"Had I but known that all it would take would be your miserable amity for Cynder."

She blinked back sudden, strength-sapping tears, unable to even see Spyro's face through them. There it was, confirmed – this was her fault, and Gaul knew it. Now Spyro knew it too. Surely he had to see that she hadn't been important to them at all… This was a trap to begin with. They'd known that he was too good, too pure, to leave a friend behind.

_I am the worst kind of friend_ , she lamented. _I've lead my only friend to his death_.

"How tragic, really… that she should be the one to destroy you."

That was her detestable cue. Inhaling sharply, Cynder leapt from behind the pillar without even stretching. The rear half of her body was numb and her aim was clumsy, but she still managed to knock Spyro squarely to the ground, landing on top of him with a sharp exhalation that she couldn't quite contain. Before he could even roll back onto his front she picked herself up and danced lithely away. Her mind was whirring. It was like the arena all over again – but the stakes were so much higher.

The Celestial moons glowed blue-white and fuschia between jagged peaks of rock above them, blurring together.

"You don't need to do this, Cynder," he said as he picked himself up off the ground, in that very serious way of his. His eyes sought hers pleadingly. She detected a note of desperate sadness in his voice that nearly broke her mangled heart in two.

"Just like old times, huh, Spyro?" she murmured just loud enough for Gaul to hear. She looked into his eyes deeply and willed him to put two and two together, wings spread out the same way they had been nearly a day ago when they faced each other in broad daylight.

His eyes widened comically. _Ancients help us, he's not subtle, is he_. She cursed Sparx' influence. Before he could muck it all up and give them away, she leaned forward as if to snap at him and risked the barest whisper.

"Same as last time." She hastily decided on a plan. They were all equally terrible, after all, and they had to do something. Time was of the essence now. "Line me up with his staff."

To his credit, he didn't even nod, just began to circle her in their now-familiar way. She watched Gaul from the corner of her eye, enraged by the arrogant sneer he wore, as if he were already victorious. _Joke's on you_ , she thought, and launched herself into the air and directly at his staff, claws extended, just as Spyro threw himself out of the way.

Gaul snatched her out of the air with one huge hand and squeezed her until she felt as though she'd suffocate. He shook her mercilessly about, her tail flopping uselessly about beneath her and her head jerking from side to side like one of her training dummies, and there was nothing she could do – her limbs, her wings, were all trapped to her sides in the Ape King's leathery paw, and it was all she could do to keep from losing consciousness even as her lungs began to burn and the blackness encroached on the edges of her vision.

"This isn't over," he ground out menacingly, and threw her as if she were nothing but a weed against the wall.

Her skull cracked against the stone. She collapsed to the ground without even time to regain her breath, and clung frantically to the sound of Spyro's gasp as the pain blossomed down her spine and her eyes rolled back behind her closed lids.

_Tear his head off, Spyro_ , she slurred inside her spinning mind. _For me._

And then Spyro, and Gaul, ceased to exist.

* * *

_The sirens were too distant. The blood was roaring in her ears. It dripped from her bruised mouth. Her mother was screaming out in pain, and she was going to murder her father._

_"_ _You'll be dead before they get here, cunt," he seethed as he shook her. "I'll kill you_ both! _I'll kill them, too! And it will be your fault. How do you like that?" Her pink-polished nails scrabbled uselessly at his wrists as he pinned her up against the wall._

_She kept her eyes glued to him as she slowly felt her way along the counter, fingers trembling, searching. They skimmed the cool metal edge of the sink and followed the edge of it around toward the wall, then made contact with the wooden block –_ bingo.

_There was a curious sense of disconnect as her fingers wrapped around the plastic handle. She imagined the blade plunging into his back. How the blood would well up around the metal and the resistance as she jerked it back out with a sickening sucking sound, bringing a tidal wave of dark crimson with it. He'd twist and stare at her, wide-eyed in disbelief. Her eyes, identical, would be reflected in blooming black saucer pupils, and he'd gape like a fish as he released her mother and let her crumple down against the floor, stumbling back a step towards his only daughter, shuddering as the blood spurted from his back across the ugly brown linoleum tile and painting the wall in spatters and uneven streaks._

_Her heart thumped painfully. She felt her mouth twisting into a snarl, lipstick-stained teeth bared and ready to tear out throats._

_"_ _Get your fucking hands OFF OF HER," she shouted, drawing the knife out so quickly that it nearly sliced her cheek._

_The sirens were deafening now. She couldn't think. Couldn't breathe. She took several fast, staggering steps in his direction, feeling almost drunk, and her forearms locked up painfully as he turned his head to look at her with a sneer._

_"_ _You gonna stab your daddy, princess?" he laughed. "Go ahead. I'm dead already." Her mother made a furious, desperate noise in the back of her throat and wrenched her shoulder from his grip, only to be slammed back against the wall forcefully. April charged forward blade-first with an inhuman screech, black and red encroaching on the edges of her vision._

_"_ _I'll fucking kill you!"_

_He moved as if in slow motion, throwing himself out of the way – the gleaming tip of the blade barely missed his side and before she knew what had happened, before she could process her actions or his or her entire lifetime's worth of panic, his huge calloused hands were wrapped around her wrists like iron, whiskey breath fanning across her face._

_There was a cursory knock on the door. Everything happened too-fast and terror-laced. The knife clattered to the floor and spun away, her mother wailed louder than the sirens, the door burst inward to reveal two, three, four policemen with guns out and grim expressions but April could hardly see them behind the man directly in front of her, squeezing her too-thin wristbones 'til they cracked like toothpicks. She fought back a confusing image of bared fangs and huge, spread wings, wicked claws rending his flesh apart and sinking deep into his chest to pull out his crushed, still-beating heart. A dark aura seemed to overtake her mind like mist, she couldn't see –_

What is that –?

_"_ _What the fuck is this?!" he roared. April shook and yanked, meeting less resistance than she had anticipated. Her head cracked back against the wall._

_She lay there dazed and approaching unconsciousness, shuddering, even as the four men in uniform wrestled her father into cuffs like they would a rampaging bear. A shadow hovered protectively over her –_ mom _._

_She attempted a weak smile and failed. She could barely make out those pink nails digging into the fleshy heel of two shaking, determined hands._

I really would have killed him before I let him hurt you ever again _, she thought dazedly. She couldn't focus her eyes anymore. Someone was standing over her now, shining something too-bright into her eyes, but she could only loll her head to the side and mumble her discomfort._ I really, really would have.

_It should have felt like an ending. Like relief. But instead the trembling overtook her, turning her body to useless mush. She was an adult, but she felt more like a child than she ever had. She was a different person now. A murderer in her own mind._

I would have…

_Things were not okay._

_And she would never be sane again._

* * *

That one had been, in retrospect, the worst yet. The worst by far.

Cynder surged to her feet, wild-eyed and half-conscious, her heart beating wildly in her ears. _How long was I gone? Where is Spyro – where is anyone?_ She stumbled away from the wall and toward the dais, only to stop short and stare with growing dread at the crumbling hole in the floor where the carefully carved stone circle had been. The sinister beam of purple light streaming down from the moons above had grown wider and more intense in her absence, and it shot straight down through the hole – down to where she could only assume that Spyro must be.

The faint buzzing of Sparx's wings alerted her to his presence. She turned to look at him helplessly. For once, he didn't regard her with suspicion – he, too, was wide-eyed with panic. "What happened?" she asked, her voice cracking with strain. Gaul's hand had evidently crushed part of her larynx.

"I don't know – Gaul did this thing, with the staff, and he – the floor just, it just FELL, they both just fell through!" Sparx clutched his tiny head and buzzed in frantic circles around her for a moment, hyperventilating. "Oh God, what if he's dead!"

"Gaul's down there too?" She endeavored to take deep, calming breaths, but Sparx's proximity wasn't helping. It took all of her wavering self-control not to swat him out of the air with her tail. "We have to go down there. We have to help Spyro – he isn't ready for this."

The dragonfly froze in place and fixed her with an incredulous look. "Are you kidding?! He'll murder us! Have you seen that thing? He looks like Malefor killed him and resurrected him to be a – a heartless killing machine or something!"

Cynder narrowed her eyes into slits, her patience nearing the end of its metaphoric wick. "Yes, Sparx, I know… _exactly_ … what Gaul is capable of."

She took little satisfaction in the guilty way he nodded, his eyes flickering to the shrunken but still-visible scars that she bore on her wings and across her neck. She didn't have time to gloat anymore… her time was up. That dream, unlike the others, was still strong and horribly vibrant in her mind, which could only mean that her mind was beginning to split apart at last. A horrible sense of urgency gripped her, tighter than Gaul's massive hand ever could have.

_I have to help him before I_ –

She couldn't even bear to think the words. Sparx interrupted her thoughts again, in any case, buzzing around the rim of gaping hole and whining, "Oh God, oh God, all I hear is explosions, oh God what if he's dead, what will I tell our mother –"

Cynder shut her eyes tightly and blocked him out. Long minutes passed, the only noises the crash of rock and distant, pained grunts from far below, and Sparx's increasingly distressed rambling. Finally, when the sounds from below abruptly stopped and didn't start up again, she sat up straighter and crept warily closer to the edge.

"What's happening down there?" she murmured, mostly to herself. Sparx evidently felt better with her beside him, because he dared to peek even further over the edge.

"Spyro? You okay, buddy?" he called timidly. Cynder snorted.

The small, snarling form of a dragon poised for battle shot up through the widening beam of dark magic. Sparx shot back from the rim and screamed. Cynder backed away more slowly, gazing up at Spyro like she had never thought she'd see him. He was upright, wings spread to their maximum length, his eyes gaping white holes in his face; as Cynder watched, breathless and filled with the worst kind of thoughts, he jerked from side to side and struggled to free himself. _Is he trapped?_ He seemed to be – he was looking down at himself, confused and helpless and probably as horrified as both of them felt.

He looked, she realized sickly, exactly like Malefor – exactly like she had, in those early days she could hardly bring herself to remember in any detail.

_No. No, oh, no. Not him. NO._

"Oh, no," she heard herself whisper out loud.

Sparx, beside himself, propelled his tiny body up toward his friend as though he could save him from himself. He didn't react – he didn't immediately seem able to even see them. Cynder steeled herself.

_I have to fix this_.

Joints weak with guilt and terror, she stepped back towards the beam. "Spyro, stop!" she shouted at the top of her lungs.

Though he couldn't see her, he must have heard her – he growled sinisterly and snapped in Sparx's direction. "Woah, calm down man, it's me!"

Spyro groaned and struggled weakly again, flailing his limbs. When he opened his eyes, they were clear again – _he's still in there!_ "I… I can't…" he bit out. Relief surged through Cynder like an icy blast, and she did the only thing that she could think to do.

She backed up and took a running leap, flapping her aching wings powerfully and knocking him clean out of the pulsating light. It seared through her scales and penetrated her to her core – she could feel it, evil burrowing under her scales again, wrapping itself back around her organs and worming into her heart – but there was something else there now, forcing it out, and she didn't have the time right now to spare a second thought once the relief caught up to her. She staggered and let out a shaky breath as she regained her balance.

"Spyro…" Sparx tentatively approached his friend – his brother – but Spyro evidently couldn't bring himself to look at him.

He shook his head slowly, eyes downcast and brimming with poignant shame that temporarily made Cynder's heart feel alive again, just so that it could clench up with painful empathy. "What have I done?" It wasn't clear who he was talking to.

"You're okay, Spyro. You're with friends," she said softly, leaning in towards him. Her whole body ached with the look in his eyes, the reflection of _her_ expression in them.

"I'm sorry… I… I couldn't stop." His violet eyes carried a haunted look now, gazing only briefly at her before sliding right through her to some existential place that existed only in his head.

This wasn't how she'd imagined their reunion, or their victory. There were a million ways that Cynder wanted to console him – more words than she'd ever have time to say, she realized – but it turned out that there was no time for even one. A monstrous chunk of rock came slamming through the jagged opening, blocking their view of the empty black space where the Celestial moons should have been – blocking the sky entirely, except for a tiny sliver. Through the tunnels came a foreboding rumbling noise. Cynder's eyes darted wildly about for another route of escape, but there were none to be seen.

The Mountain was collapsing.

"That's our only way out!" Sparx wailed.

Cynder wanted to hit him. She jumped up and eyed the hole desperately, turning to face her companions. "Come on! Now's our chance!"

Spyro lifted his head and regarded her miserably. He made no move to get up. "Just go."

The black rage in her chest threatened to spill over. "Get up, Spyro!" she yelled, flaring out her wings and stepping back toward him despite her better instincts. "We're not leaving without you!"

_You wouldn't leave without me._

"Usually I would say ignore her," Sparx shouted above the noise. "But she's making sense this time!"

The purple dragon regarded his friends for a long moment each, swaying slightly with pain and exhaustion. He slowly dragged himself to his feet. Cynder bit back her impatience, watching him on tenterhooks. She felt unhinged. The shadows were dancing, anxious and excited, and she could feel them each as if they were part of her.

Just as he tensed up to take off, Spyro sprang back, eyes widening with dismay. Cynder followed his gaze – another boulder, this one even larger, was hurtling through the air towards their tiny opening. She got one wingstroke into the air, mouthing, "No!" But it was useless.

"Oh, no," Spyro gasped, sounding utterly sick with himself. His entire body seemed to crumple inwards. "We're _trapped_."

The three of them stared at each other for a long, nauseating minute as the mountain continued to shake violently around them. The thought seemed to pass through each of their heads and to the others. _We're going to be buried alive._ _We're going to die._ Chips and chunks of rock bounced off of the floor, one of them narrowly missing Cynder's head. Nothing mattered anymore. Time seemed to freeze, even as it passed too quickly, speeding toward their imminent deaths.

_Spyro,_ she thought to herself, desperately rehearsing as the seconds ticked away. She wasn't sure that she could get them past her throat but she intended to try, as soon as she figured out how to string them together. _I'm sorry. You're too good for me, Spyro. Too good for any of this. You've given me something to believe in – you gave me hope that life wasn't inherently horrible. And I stole yours away._

_I wish that I hadn't dragged you down with me. I wish…_

A queer look came over Spyro's face when Cynder looked up, her mouth already open to confess – or try to. She shut it quickly, discarding that idea, and watched him with bated breath. Sparx glowed fiercely, anxiously. Spyro's snout scrunched up and his mouth set in a firm, angry line as he stood straight again and beckoned them to him with a loud, sure voice.

"Get close to me. Now!"

Without question – because Spyro was a natural leader, because they all just needed comfort, needed the intimacy of standing close enough to touch in the face of their early deaths – Sparx and Cynder bounded closer and huddled against Spyro as he closed his eyes and squared his shoulders, wings curved protectively around both of them. Cynder felt helpless tears sliding down one side of her face and ducked her head against Spyro's shoulder. She couldn't let him see her cry now, this close to the end.

_He doesn't deserve to feel ashamed. I'm the one who should be ashamed._ She sobbed silently into his shoulder as she felt the truth in her own silent words, trembling with grief. She could feel that Spyro was still trembling minutely as well, but that only made her chest feel even more constricted. _It's all my fault. I should never have hatched._

She squeezed her eyes shut more tightly in a futile attempt to halt the fresh wave of tears. She'd never get to tell Spyro how she… she'd never even get to _thank_ him now. For everything.

_I hate myself._

A vibrant amber light seemed to burst from Spyro, stretching outward in a perfect orb and encompassing all of them in its warmth. It felt almost liquidy, but it was getting thicker – strangely, Cynder didn't feel as though it was getting harder to breathe. Instead… Instead, it felt simply as though her lungs were inflating more gradually. The rocks hurtling toward them seemed to be coming in slow motion now, harmless. The amber light grew darker, deeper, slowly obscuring the chamber…

_Has Spyro stopped time?_ she thought, and then, _Oh_.

He'd made a crystal. From… from _his own_ magic…

Ignitus' voice echoed again in her mind one last time, but the words got lost. She made out _purple dragon_ and made the connection, amazed and slightly horrified at the reality of it.

Cynder tried to flex her claws. She tried to flex her wings. She tried to think. Her mind was slowing down as well, fixed on one single amazed thought.

They were _inside_ a crystal.

Though she was surrounded by light, Cynder felt the tendrils of shadows that had wrapped around her comfortingly earlier, this time beneath her frozen scales. It was inside of her – living, pulsing, somehow not terrifying. No. This darkness was not like the darkness that had lived in Spyro parasitically only minutes-centuries ago. Not evil like Malefor's. No…

This darkness was _hers._

This was _her_ power.

Her heart stopped beating, and her dreams called to her from the damaged, bleeding, tender depths of her mind. Her anxiety could not catch breath to renew itself. Everything was so still. Perfect. And her dreams, they would be her only escape... unlike the hole in the avalanche of poisoned rock, this one called to her despite the way she clung to Spyro and refused to think of leaving him, grabbed a hold of her and _yanked_. She found that she couldn't resist.

She let herself fall into them.


End file.
